


Baba Yaga's Children

by Mhalachai



Series: A Widow's Tale [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Child Abandonment, Gen, Morally Ambiguous Character, POV Child, Soviet Russia, alone in the woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 48,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the Black Widow, before the Red Room, there was a little girl who lived alone in the woods, and that girl’s name was Natalia Alianovna Romanova.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Every fairy tale is an origin story.
> 
> A few necessary words about this story: You will note the ratings and the warnings (and the lack thereof) – while this story does contain scenes in which a child witnesses violence, this story does not (other than being shaken twice) contain any physical or other violence against the child. I wouldn't normally put this sort of a warning at the start of a story, but origin stories for women/girls in comic books can sometimes be a bit creepy. That doesn't happen here. 
> 
> A note on language: Obviously, the characters would be speaking Russian throughout. For ease of reading, this story is in English. I've tried to keep the slang out of things.

* * *

_Russia, the late 1940s_

**The First Day**

Natalia woke up with a start.

Had she heard something? Was something out there in the forest? It was dark inside her tiny forest house, but hints of greyness told her that the sun would be up soon.

She didn't hear anything else, and she decided that she must have had a bad dream. She had those, sometimes, but there was never anyone around to hold her when she woke up. She was starting to forget if anyone ever had.

Rubbing at her eyes, Natalia crawled out of her nest of dried leaves. The air smelled like fog, and she shivered in the cold air. It would be warm soon enough when the sun came up. She just had to wait.

She had gone to sleep wearing her only dress and her sweater, both of which were growing too small. Natalia stuck her arms out in front of her, wiggling her fingers just for fun.

It was getting lighter outside. Natalia quickly tidied up her little forest house, pushing the leaves of her bed back into a small pile. The little metal pail she used to carry water and berries was by the wall, ready for the day, so Natalia picked up the pail and climbed up the stone wall, emerging from her little house under the tree into the grey morning.

Even in the faint morning light, Natalia knew this part of the forest by heart. She had been here for many, many days, more than she could count. As she walked down the little path to the river, she sang a made-up song, not minding that there was no one else around.

Sometimes, she sang to the leshy, the forest spirit, especially when it was dark and windy in the trees. Today, however, she sang for herself.

At the river's edge, Natalia knelt down on the rocks and scooped up some water in her pail. She thanked the rusalka, the lady who lived in the river, and quickly ran back up the hill. So far, the rusalka hadn't ever come out of the water when Natalia was close, but Natalia knew that one day, if the rusalka was hungry, she would grab Natalia and pull her into the river if Natalia lingered too long at the water's edge.

Baba Yaga had said so.

Back at her little forest house, Natalia sipped at the water because she was thirsty. She was also hungry, but she had eaten the last of the ripe berries the previous morning, and there was nothing else to eat. She should have to go out looking for food today.

It was brighter now, and Natalia could see through the dark thicket up the hill from her little house. It was morning, just the right time of day to visit Baba Yaga, so Natalia picked up her little pail and headed into the darkest place in the forest.

Twice, she saw a squirrel, and once, as she inched precariously along the stone outcropping on the way to Baba Yaga's house, she thought she saw a lynx. But the lynx didn't see her, and so Natalia just ran as fast as she could until she got to Baba Yaga's house, shadowed by tall thick trees all around.

The little wooden hut was silent, as it always was. Natalia knocked politely at the front door, and climbed through the open window, as she always did.

"Good morning, Baba Yaga," Natalia said, setting her pail down on the table. The old woman took no notice of Natalia. "I brought you some water."

She poured the water into the stoneware cup by Baba Yaga's hand.

"I have to go find food today," Natalia explained. "Which way should I go?"

The woman didn't speak, but a scratching sound came from the leeward side of the hut. Natalia knew that was the sign of which way she had to go.

"Thank you, Baba Yaga!" Natalia caught up her pail and climbed back out the window. Baba Yaga always helped Natalia, and so Natalia would always bring Baba Yaga water from the rusalka's river in thanks.

The sun was high in the sky when Natalia climbed up the ridge in the direction Baba Yaga had shown her. There, she found several berry bushes, and her hands became purple with berry juice as she picked the small fruits. There were so many berries that she couldn't eat them all, and so she stuffed her small pail with enough to eat that night, or even tomorrow.

It would be nice, to have food tomorrow she didn't have to search for.

Once, Natalia thought she saw the leshy deeper in the forest, but it was daytime so she didn't run away. The leshy was only dangerous if you were out after dark, everyone knew that. Only when it was dark could he pick you up and carry you away and eat you up, bones and skin and all.

Natalia was high up on the mountain now, so high she could see down into the valley when she looked through the trees. She wondered how far away the village was, and how many people were there, and if they had food to eat. It had been a long time since she been down in the village.

She didn't like the village.

With a shudder, Natalia broke into a run. The forest floor was quiet under her bare feet, the pine needles cushioning her steps. It was nice to run in the forest, when she had eaten and her stomach didn't ache.

She ran for a long time, longer than she'd been able to in a long time, when a spot of black against green caught her attention and she froze in place.

There was someone in the forest.

No animal had fur that color, not in the forest.

Natalia kept very still, her hands over her mouth. What if it was another leshy, one that could come out in daytime and eat children? Natalia was very small; she would never be able to run away.

Maybe, if the leshy was hungry, he would eat her berries and leave her alive.

Natalia edged closer to the clearing, keeping well hidden behind the bushes. There _was_ a man in the clearing, but he was not a leshy. He had short hair and no beard, and his jacket was the same kind as soldiers wore.

Natalia put her thumb in her mouth. Why would a soldier be up here in the mountain? It was dangerous; the leshy might find him and eat him all up.

Natalia watched as the man pulled things from his rucksack and laid them on the ground before him, beside his rifle. She did not know what the black tubes were for, nor the small golden circle, but when she spotted the paper with the cream-coloured wedge on it, her mouth began to water.

The soldier had _food_.

Natalia bit down hard on her thumb to keep from making a noise. The man had food and maybe he wouldn't mind if Natalia had some, because she was very hungry.

The man used his long knife to cut some of the cheese off the wedge and spread it onto a bread roll. He ate quickly, not at all like Natalia would have done. She could have eaten the bread and the cheese slowly, so it would last longer and she wouldn't be hungry so soon afterwards.

As soon as the man had finished the bread, he wiped his knife clean and slid it back into the sheath at his waist. Leaving everything else where it was, he stood, and walked away from Natalia into the forest.

As son as the man vanished from sight, Natalia darted into the clearing. There was another bread roll sitting beside the cheese. Natalia could take the bread and run away into the forest and the man would never know what happened. He might think a squirrel took his food.

Natalia reached out, but she couldn't pick up the roll. If she were to do that, that would mean she was a thief.

Natalia pulled back her hand. She was not a thief! A thief took something that didn't belong to her. Her papa had always said that there was no worse thief than the kind who stole someone else's food when everyone was hungry.

And Natalia was _so_ hungry.

What could she do?

Wait. She knew! She would leave some of her berries in trade for the bread. That was proper, to trade what you had for something you didn't. She had berries, and they were very tasty, and she didn't think the man had any. Carefully, she knelt down and put two handfuls of berries from her pail onto the clean grass beside the man's rucksack. There. That was a proper trade.

She stood up, satisfied, and was just about to reach for the bread when something grabbed her from behind and shook her, hard.

"What are you doing?" a loud voice demanded, and for a moment Natalia thought that the leshy had come out of the forest to eat her all up, and she screamed and screamed.

Another shake, then the hands let go and Natalia fell hard to the ground. Natalia scrambled to her feet and had run no more than four steps toward the edge of the clearing when a hand closed around her arm and hauled her around. It was the soldier man dressed all in black, come to get her.

"Were you stealing my food?" the soldier demanded, squeezing her arm so tight that Natalia couldn't stop herself from crying out in pain. "Are you a little thief?"

"I wasn't stealing!" Natalia yelled, trying to get away from the man. "I left you berries, it was a trade!"

The man glared at her with blue-green eyes. "Who sent you out here?" he demanded, not loosening his grip on her arm.

Natalia couldn't help it; she started to cry because her arm hurt so much and she couldn't get away. "Baba Yaga," she wailed. "Sh--she said there were berries and I came and found the berries and then I saw you in the forest!"

The man glared at her some more, then without warning he let go of her arm. Natalia fell back onto the ground once again. This time, she just sat there and held her arm and cried a little more because it hurt so much and she was scared and she didn't know what to do.

The man stood, towering over her. "Stop crying," he ordered. "Stop it right now."

Natalia tried to stop crying, and she found that after a few minutes, her arm hurt less, and she sniffled instead.

"That's better," the man said. He reached down and Natalia cringed away, but he only pulled her to her feet. "Tell me who sent you out here."

"I told you," Natalia said, feeling somewhat cross. "Baba Yaga. She said there were berries."

"Baba Yaga is a children's tale," the man told Natalia. "She isn't real. Who sent you out here, was it your father?"

Natalia stamped her foot. "Baba Yaga _is_ real!" she said loudly. "And I don't have a father!"

"Your mother, then," the man said.

"I don't have a mother."

"I don't believe you." The man walked over to his rucksack and swiftly put his belongings back inside, including, much to Natalia's chagrin, the food. "Who do you live with?"

"Nobody." Natalia frowned up at the man. "I don't like you."

"I don't care," the man said. He pulled on his rucksack and settled his rifle strap over one shoulder. "You're a baby. You have to live with someone."

That was the final straw. Natalia drew herself up to her full height, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She didn't care if the man hurt her arm again, he was so mean! "I'm _not a_ _baby_!" she shouted at him.

"Yes, you are." The man grabbed for her again, but Natalia danced away. "Show me where you live. I want to talk to your father."

"I don't have a father," Natalia repeated. She scurried over to where her little metal pail lay tipped on its side, berries spilling all over the grass. Quickly, before the man could grab her again, she swept the berries back into the pail.

"Stop being a stupid child," the man said. "Show me where you live."

"I don't want to," Natalia said stubbornly. She glared up at the man. He glared back.

He broke first. "If you show me where you live," he said, "I will give you the bread."

Natalia perked up. She was still hungry, even though she'd eaten many berries. Certainly, the bread would be tasty, and then she wouldn't be so hungry. After another moment, Natalia nodded, and reached out her hands.

"After."

"Now."

"If I give you the bread now, you will run away into the forest."

Natalia dropped her hands. "No, I won't," she promised.

The man frowned, but he reached into his rucksack and pulled out the bread that had started all this. He tore the bread in half, and gave one piece to Natalia. "Now," he demanded as he put the other half of the roll into his pocket, "Let's go."

Natalia nibbled on the bread as she started off into the forest, her berry pail hanging over one arm, the soldier walking behind her. It was a very nice day, with the sun shining warm through the leaves, and the grass soft under her bare feet.

"Why are you so high up in the mountains?" the man asked as they came to the rocky gully that used to be a stream. "We are far from the closest village."

"I don't live in the village." Natalia took one last bite of her bread, and put the rest into her pocket for later. She had been living in the forest for long enough to know that if she saved some food for later in the day, she would feel better. "I like it up here. There are lots of berries."

"Do you often gather berries?" the man asked.

"Yes. I like berries." Natalia snuck a glance up at the man. "Do you?"

"Yes."

"I like the red ones best," Natalia told him, giving a little skip as they walked down the slope, weaving around the pine trees. "And then the blue berries. But I ate all those earlier and the only other ones are where the bears live and I don't like the bears."

"Why don't you like bears?"

"Because they eat little girls!" Natalia exclaimed. "They catch you and eat you all up, skin and bones! Every story says so!"

"They won't bother with you," the man said. "You're too small."

"Am not!" Natalia stretched out her arms. "See? My sleeves used to be long, and now they're short! That means I'm growing big."

"Why doesn't your mother make you bigger clothes?"

Natalia put her arms down. "I don't have a mother," she said, and this time she felt sad. She didn't often think of mama, or Petrov or Ivan or Ana, but she remembered them sometimes. Thinking back further, she could faintly recall her papa, but he had gone away before Ana was born, and that was a long time ago for Natalia.

They reached the ridge now, and Natalia scrambled over the small rocky ledge without a second thought. On flat ground, she glanced back, only to see that the soldier was still on the other side.

"Are you coming?" Natalia called.

He didn't look happy, Natalia thought. He looked sort of like Ivan used to, whenever Petrov had dangled him off the side of the cow barn.

Natalia put her pail on the ground and hurried back across the rocky ledge. She held out her hand to the man. "It's really easy," she assured him, and pulled him along after her. Twice, his hand tightened around hers, but Natalia was a big girl and didn't cry out even once.

On the other side, back on flat ground, the man let go of Natalia's hand and bent over, hands on his knees and breathing heavily.

Natalia bit her thumb, wondering if he was going to be okay. Whenever Natalia felt bad, she tried to find something to eat. Maybe that was what was wrong with the man, she decided. Picking up her pail, she walked over to where the man was standing.

"Eat some," Natalia ordered, holding the pail up. "You'll feel better."

The man looked at her, sickly pale under his tan. It took him a moment, but he straightened up. He stared up at the sky for a few minutes, then took a deep breath.

"Keep moving," was all he said.

Natalia started walking again.

This part of the forest was warmer than on the mountain, and Natalia grew happier the closer they got to her tiny forest house. The soldier would see that she wasn't lying, that she didn't have a mother or father, and he would give her the rest of the bread, and he would go away. Yes, Natalia decided, that was what she wanted to happen.

The soldier stopped her at the edge of the rusalka's river, to fill his canteen. While he drank, Natalia crouched down and washed the berry juice from her hands. She cupped her palms and filled them with water to drink.

"Mmm," she said, and drank again.

The soldier was watching her. "How far are we from your house?" he asked.

"Not far," Natalia said. She shook her hands dry. "Thank you!" she shouted to the river.

The soldier was on his feet in an instant, his rifle in his hands. "Who are you talking to?" he demanded.

"The rusalka," Natalia explained, puzzled by his reaction. "If you thank her for the water, she doesn't pull you in and eat you."

The man stared at Natalia. "Who tells you these ridiculous stories?"

Natalia shrugged. "I just always knew them, I think."

He slung his rifle over his shoulder. "Fairy stories aren't real," he told her. "You need to stop imagining things."

"Baba Yaga's real," Natalia objected. "She talks to me and tells me stories sometimes. And the leshy is real – I see him in the forest all the time. Sometimes when I'm sleeping he comes right up to the door of my house and tries to get me to come outside into the dark so he can eat me up. But I never do!"

The man shook his head. "You are a strange child," he muttered.

"You're a mean man," Natalia shot back. She turned her back on him as she climbed over the last fallen tree, and she was finally home.

Running down the hill, Natalia placed her pail beside the entrance to her little forest house. Everything was just as she'd left it that morning, and she was happy.

She sat on the rock in the middle of the clearing, warm in the sun, and pulled the bread out of her pocket. She took a bite and chewed and chewed, watching the soldier walk carefully down the hill.

He looked at the clearing, at the tree growing out of the old crumbling stone wall, at the overhead branches, and finally, at Natalia.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"This is where I live," Natalia said proudly. "This is my house."

The man shrugged his rucksack off his shoulders and settled it on the ground, followed by his rifle. He pulled a handgun from his hip holster and, cocking it, poked his head into the tree.

He was almost too big to get in the door to her forest house, Natalia saw with amusement. But he twisted and slid and in he went.

He was down there for not long at all. When he climbed up again, his face was serious. Slipping his handgun back into his holster, he crossed the clearing and knelt in front of Natalia. He looked at her, and Natalia looked back at him.

"Is this really where you live?" he finally asked.

"Yes," Natalia said before she put the last of the bread into her mouth.

"All alone?"

Natalia nodded, feeling sad again. She let her head drop, chin nearly touching her chest.

The man reached out and lifted her chin with two fingers. "What is your name, child?"

"Natalia," said Natalia, sounding out every syllable with relish. "Natalia Alianovna Romanova."

The man smiled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. "That's a big name for such a little girl," he said. He let go of Natalia's chin and bopped her on the head. "So, Natalia, tell me, if you have no mother and no father, why are you all alone out here?"

"Can I have the rest of my bread?" Natalia asked.

The man sighed, but he reached into his pocket and pulled out the rest of Natalia's bread. He handed it to her.

"Thank you," Natalia said politely, and started chewing on the bread.

The man stood up and walked around the clearing again. He looked at the little hollow where Natalia had lined up some pretty rocks she took from the riverbank; at the little flowers that grew by the base of the old pine tree.

Eventually, he came back over to the rock in the centre of the clearing, and sat down. "How old are you?" he asked, watching Natalia as she nibbled at the bread roll.

Natalia finished her bite. "I am five years old," she said. Before, she had been four years old, but that had been in the winter. Now, they were in summer, so that had to mean she was five years old.

The man snorted. "You're very small for five years old."

"I am not!" Natalia cried. 

"You are. You're short. And skinny."

"I am not," she repeated, feeling hot prickles of shame in her eyes. Her older brother Petrov used to make fun of Natalia for being so small. He would take her food and push her around and their mother didn't pay any attention, or else would tell Natalia to stop bothering Petrov. 

Natalia didn't want to be small.

Her eyes got hot and tears fell down her cheeks, but she didn't cry like a baby. The man was mean like Petrov and she didn't like him for calling her small. 

He kicked her foot. "Stop that," he ordered. "There's nothing wrong with being small. You can get into tiny places."

"I don't want to get into tiny places!" Natalia cried. She lifted the bread roll back to her mouth and tried to take another bite. "When I grow up I'm going to be big!"

The man was quiet, but since he didn't tease her, or take her food away, she didn't care. 

With a mighty sniffle, Natalia did what she'd seen the man do, and took a big bite of bread. If she was going to be big when she grew up, she would eat like she was already big. 

"Don't choke," the man said. 

Natalia shook her head, not looking at the man.

He sighed. "Child, stop crying," he told her. "If you stop crying I'll show you something interesting."

"What?"

"Will you stop crying?"

Natalia rubbed at her eyes. "I stopped," she said quickly, even though her eyes still felt hot and her throat hurt. "What will you show me?"

The man went over to his rucksack and pulled out the black tubes she had seen in the forest. "These are binoculars," he said, pronouncing the unfamiliar word carefully. "You can look in one end and see things up close."

Natalia wiped her hands on her skirt and stood up on the rock. "I want to see," she said.

The man put the binoculars in her hands. "Hold these carefully," he admonished. "And look in here."

Natalia put her eyes to the round circles, and gasped. It was like she was looking at leaves close up! She pulled the binoculars away from her face to look at the trees, then lifted the binoculars again.

She looked at the leaves, and at the trees, then at the man's face, although all she could see was his nose, all big and round. She giggled at that.

While she was playing with the binoculars, the man had gone into his rucksack, and pulled out a piece of folded paper. He sat on the ground and unfolded the paper, looking at it intently.

After a few minutes, Natalia grew bored of looking through the binoculars. She hopped down off the rock and skipped over to the man's side. "What is your name?" she asked.

"I don't have a name," said the man. He took the binoculars from Natalia's hand.

Natalia frowned. "Everyone has a name."

"I don't."

"Why not?"

"Because."

"What did your mama call you?"

The man looked at Natalia. "Don't you ever run out of questions?" he asked.

Natalia shrugged. "I don't think so."

The man put the paper on the ground. "Do you know what a map is?"

"Of course I do!" Natalia said. "A map tells you where you're going!"

"Something like that." The man pointed at a spot on the paper. "That's where we are."

Natalia crouched down to look at the map. The soldier had pointed out a place that was marked with crooked lines and squiggly lines. "How do you know that?" she asked.

The man pointed up at the big mountain, far off in the distance. "The mountain there, is here." He pointed back at the map. "And the river is here." He moved his finger. "That means we are here."

"What's that?" Natalia asked, pointing to a tiny black dot close to the man's finger.

"That's a village," he said. "The village just down the hill. Do you know it?"

Natalia clenched her hands into fists. She didn't like thinking about the village. There were bad people there. After a minute, she nodded.

The man looked at her for a long time before going back to the map.

"Is this what soldiers do?" Natalia asked as the man made markings on the paper.

"Do you think I'm a soldier?" the man asked.

"Of course you are!" Natalia said, flinging out her hands with the obviousness of it all. "Soldiers have rifles and jackets and things."

"How do you know that?"

"My papa was a soldier," Natalia said. Mama had told her so.

"Where is your papa now?"

"He died." Mama had told her that too, a long time ago.

"Did he die in the war?" the man asked. He had put down his pencil and was watching Natalia closely.

Natalia shook her head. "Petrov said papa was making a building and he fell off it and he died."

"Who in the hell is Petrov?" the man demanded.

Natalia scowled. "My brother," she admitted. "I don't like him."

The man sighed. "When did your father die?"

Natalia looked at her hands. It was summer, and Ana had been born in the winter, and papa had gone away before that, when it was still warm out. "When I was this many," Natalia said, holding up two fingers on her left hand and two fingers on her right hand.

"That long ago, huh?"

Natalia couldn't tell if the man was being mean or not. She dropped her hands and glared at him, her jaw clenched. "Don't be mean about my papa!" she shouted.

"I'm not being mean about anyone."

"My papa was a soldier!" Natalia cried. "I'm going to be a soldier just like him when I grow up!"

"Are you, now?" The man drew his knees up and rested his elbows on his knees. His left hand, on which he wore a black glove, tapped out a rhythm on his right hand. "Why do you want to be a soldier?"

"Because they are brave," Natalia said. "They fight bad men and nothing can scare them."

"That's one kind of soldier," the man agreed. "But you have to do more than that, if you're a soldier. You have to obey orders. You have to be tough and strong."

"I'm strong," Natalia said, and curled up her arms to make muscles like she'd seen the boys do. "I can be tough."

"Can you read?" the man asked. "Soldiers have to be able to read these days."

Natalia considered this. She bent over the map and looked at the squiggles until she saw something she recognized. "I can read, a little," she said. "That's an N, like my name."

The man raised his eyebrows. "You're not wrong," he said. "All right, little one, if you're going to be a soldier when you grow up, you can start practicing now."

Natalia shot to her feet. This was exciting, like a game! It had been a long time since she had played a game. "What do I do?"

"I want you to go into the forest and find firewood," the man said. "And bring it back here."

"How much?"

"As much as you can stack underneath that overhang over there," and the man pointed to the rocks on the far side of the clearing. "Well? What are you waiting for?"

Natalia gave the man a salute like she'd seen soldiers do, then she ran off into the forest, leaving the man behind in the clearing.

She knew a lot about the forest where she lived. She had been there for many months, since before the last of the snow melted. She had never made a fire herself, but she knew where there was dried wood, and in pieces small enough for her to carry.

The first place she went was the old grove where the squirrels lived. There was an old tree that had fallen down so very long ago. Now the tree was dead, and its branches were dried and brittle. Natalia picked up an armful of dried branches, and carried them back to her clearing.

The soldier was still sitting, staring at his map and paying her no mind. Natalia put her branches underneath the overhang, and was dismayed to see how small the branches looked in that large space.

"You'd better get to work," the man said behind her, never looking up.

Natalia stuck her tongue out at him, then scampered back into the forest.

The day was warm and Natalia soon grew too hot for her sweater. On one of her many trips carrying wood back to the clearing, Natalia stopped to unbutton her sweater and placed it on top of the small stone wall.

The man had stopped reading his map, and was now sharpening his knife. "Are you willing to admit that you're not a soldier, little girl?"

Natalia was breathing hard and she was hot and sweaty, but she wasn't going to let the man tell her she couldn't be a soldier. "I am a soldier!" she exclaimed, then trudged off into the woods again.

After a few minutes, she realized the man was following her.

"Go away, I can do it!"

In a few steps, the man caught up with her. "Apparently you can," he said mildly. He had his rifle slung over his shoulder. "But soldiers usually have other soldiers to help them out."

"Are you going to help me?" Natalia asked, looking up at the man. He was very tall.

"I need a break," was all the man said.

They walked across the forest to the old trees, splintered under the weight of old rocks, fallen from the overhead ledge. The man made Natalia load up his left arm with pieces of wood. Natalia picked up a few pieces of her own, and they headed back to the clearing.

With the man's armful of wood and Natalia's small pieces, the space under the rocky overhang was full of firewood. Natalia stood back to admire the woodpile.

The man patted Natalia on the head. "Good job," he said.

Feeling very satisfied, that she had carried out her very first order as a soldier, Natalia went over to the entrance to her tree and picked up her little pail. She emptied the berries onto the large rock, then started towards the river.

"Where are you going?" the man asked.

"I'm so thirsty!" Natalia exclaimed. "That was hard work. Aren't you thirsty?"

The man reached for his canteen. "Drink this, you can go get water later."

Natalia put down her pail and took a long drink from the man's canteen, only spilling a little bit on her dress. The water was warm and tasted like metal but that was all right.

When she was done, she handed the canteen back to the man. "You're not such a mean man at all," she said.

The man drank deeply from the canteen, capped it, and tossed it onto his rucksack. "Yes I am," he objected. "I'm the meanest man you'll ever meet."

Natalia giggled. "No, you're not," she said. "Are you going to make a fire?"

"I might, when it's dark and no one can see the smoke," the man said. "Go sit down and don't touch anything."

Natalia went over to the rock and hopped up onto its sun-warmed surface. The trees were casting shadows over the rock now, and Natalia knew that the sun was on its way down in the sky. Natalia chewed on a few berries, enjoying the warm breeze in the clearing as the man in his soldier jacket took apart his handgun, laying the pieces out on the paper map.

For the first time in a long time, Natalia wasn't hungry, she wasn't cold, and she wasn't alone. Her eyelids started to droop, and she decided she was going to lie down and put her head on her arm and close her eyes, just for a minute.

* * *

When Natalia awoke, the shadows were long across the clearing.

She sat up. Something was covering her, and when Natalia was awake enough, she saw the soldier's jacket laid out on top of her like a blanket.

The soldier himself was in the process of clearing pine needles away from the ground beside Natalia's tree house. Looking around, Natalia could see other changes in the clearing. A few feet from the rock, a shallow hole had been dug and was lined with smooth river rocks. Over the man's patch of ground, a lean-to of branches had been put up, the soldier's rucksack tucked neatly underneath it.

Natalia rubbed her eyes, then pushed the jacket to the side and climbed down from the rock.

"Hello, little girl," the soldier said as she approached.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm making a base camp," the man said. "I'm going to stay here for a few days while I carry out my mission."

Natalia looked at the bare ground, then at the sky, then at the man. "Why?"

"It's a good distance from where I need to go, easy access to water and shelter. And it seems as if no one comes out this way, if a little girl like you is living out here all alone," the man said. With one final sweep of his hand, he pushed away the last of the pine needles.

Natalia put her thumb in her mouth. She wasn't sure how she felt about the man staying near her home, even for a few days. Maybe he wasn't mean, but he was strange.

"Do you know any stories?" she said after a while.

The man paused what he was doing and looked at Natalia. "What do you mean, stories?"

"Stories about people," Natalia clarified. Maybe they didn't have stories in the army. "Like princesses and witches and magic."

"You want me to tell you fairy tales?" the man asked.

Natalia perked up. He knew what she was talking about! She scampered over to his side. "Yes, please," she said.

He sat back on his heels, pushing his hair out of his eyes with his gloved hand. "You're serious."

"I like stories," Natalia said. "Baba Yaga doesn't tell me many stories anymore."

"Baba Yaga again," the man muttered. He got to his feet. "You need to stop talking about that imaginary witch."

"Will you tell me a story?" Natalia persisted. She grabbed the man's trouser leg and tugged.

"If I tell you a story, will you stop pestering me?" the man asked.

Natalia nodded earnestly.

"Fine. I will tell you a story after it gets dark out," the man said. "I have too much to do before then."

Natalia beamed. He was going to tell her a story!

"Now, are you still a soldier?" he asked. Natalia nodded. "Then go find me some dried grasses, something I can use to start a fire." He pushed her away. "Go on now."

Natalia turned towards the thickest part of the forest, and hurried up the slope. She knew just the place that would have some dried grasses. She hurried, because the trees' shadows were long and dark, and soon it would be night out, and that was when the leshy came out to eat little children.

But she was a soldier now, and soldiers never got scared. The soldier man back in her clearing would never get scared, even if the leshy came right on out of the forest and tried to eat him up.

She slowed down to pick up a stick, and then dashed off again, swishing her stick back and forth like a sword. Maybe, if the leshy came after her, she could fight him off! And then he wouldn't take her into the forest and eat her all up.

After a few more minutes, Natalia found the place she wanted; dried grass growing on an old tree trunk. Breathing hard, she put down her sword and picked two big handfuls of grass. Holding the grass, she dashed back down the hill.

The sun was down over the mountain now, and the shadows were everywhere. Natalia ran and ran, but the sun was gone and it was night now and all around her, the trees were dark.

And then she saw him.

Barely holding in a scream of fright, Natalia quickly ducked behind a big tree. There, across the clearing, tall and white, was the _leshy_.

So scared she could barely breathe, Natalia peeked out from behind the tree. The leshy stood motionless by a break in the trees, tall as two men, white as clouds in the shadows, and big empty eyes staring right at her!

Natalia started to shake. She knew she shouldn't have gone out into the woods so close to darkness! And now the leshy would take her and eat her up!

She was scared and she didn't want to be scared. She remembered what the soldier had said, that soldiers had to be strong and they had to be tough. A real soldier would be strong and tough and he'd go right up to the leshy and not be scared!

Natalia took a deep breath. She'd told the man that she would get grasses for the fire, and he had called her a soldier. If he said she was a soldier, she was, and she would be strong and she would be tough and she'd walk right up to the leshy and not be scared!

Gripping her handfuls of grass tightly, Natalia took another deep breath and ran screaming towards the leshy. And just like _that_ , he disappeared, turning into a burned-out tree and a space in the trees!

"I scared you!" Natalia shouted after the disappearing leshy. "I scared you away!"

Then, just in case the leshy decided to turn around and come back, Natalia ran as fast as she could towards her clearing.

The man looked up from his rucksack when Natalia ran into the clearing. "Was that you yelling a few minutes ago?" he asked, taking the grass from her hands.

"I saw the leshy!" Natalia said excitedly. "And he was going to come after me but I wasn't scared and I scared him and he went away!"

The man turned back to her, dropping to one knee. "You saw someone?" he demanded. "Who was it?"

"It was the leshy!" Natalia said impatiently. "But it's all right, he went away!"

The man took hold of her shoulders and gave her a little shake. "Describe him," the man said.

Natalia considered this. "He was ten feet tall and he was all white and had three eyes," she said after a moment. She made circles with her hands and put them over her own eyes. "And when I ran at him, he disappeared!"

The man's grip on her shoulders loosened. "You were shouting at your own imagination," he said, standing up. "This is why you shouldn't believe in witches and ghosts; you'll get all worked up over nothing."

"It wasn't nothing," Natalia said, glaring at the man. "The leshy is real."

"No, he isn't."

"He is!" Natalia insisted. "And when he comes out tonight and wants to eat you up because you don't believe me, you'll see!"

The man knelt beside the fire pit. "If your imaginary friend comes out of the forest tonight to kill me, then yes, I will believe you. Get me some wood, I'm going to start a fire."

Natalia went to the woodpile and picked up a thick branch. She dragged it over to the fire pit. "Why don't you believe me?" she asked.

"Because ghosts and spirits don't exist," the man said. He used his long knife to shave bits of wood off the branch, and put the shavings on top of the dried grasses at the bottom of the stone-lined depression. "Humans made up stories to tell themselves around the fire and they just use those lies to explain all their fears."

"But the leshy is real," Natalia insisted. "And Baba Yaga is real too, I see her all the time."

The soldier put away his knife. "These are things you think you see," he said. "You're imagining them. When you grow up, you will see that all this is just imagination."

Natalia put her hands on her hips, like her mama used to do. "You don't know that!"

"I do."

"Do you know _everything_? Everything in the whole world?"

"I do." The man pulled out a lighter and sparked a flame. His face danced eerily in the flickering light. "When you're as old as me, you'll know everything too."

He touched the flame to the dried grasses. The grass crackled and glowed, and in a moment, the chips of wood started to burn. In a few minutes, a small fire was burning bright in the little fire pit.

Natalia stared at the little fire. The wind was starting to pick up, and any other day she would already be hiding from the dark in her little forest house, but now, she was too awake to even think about sleeping.

The man poured water from his canteen into Natalia's little berry pail, and placed that near the fire. "I'm going to make soup," he told her. "You can have some, you need dinner."

Natalia patted her belly. Already today, she had eaten so much, but she was starting to feel hungry again. "I like soup," she said, inching around the fire. But shouldn't she offer something for dinner as well? "You can have some of my berries," she offered.

The man smiled at her as he opened a small green bag. "Thank you," he said. "How does it sound if we have soup tonight and save the berries for the morning?"

Natalia nodded as she sat on the ground, close to the fire. It was warm and its light was bright and cheerful. It had been a very long time since Natalia had sat beside a fire. She liked it.

She watched the man put things into the small pail, heating beside the fire. "What is that?" she asked, pointing.

"Salted fish," the man said as he broke pieces into the pail. "Do you like fish soup?"

"I don't remember," Natalia told him. "I might."

"Just remember that we're in the field, soldier," the man said. "Rations are supposed to keep us alive, they don't have to taste good."

He dropped the last of the fish into the pail, then pulled a small potato out of the green bag. He deftly sliced the potato into small chunks and dropped those into the pail as well.

The fire had died down slightly, and the man pushed the pail closer to the embers. "Little girl, go get me another log for the fire," he said. "And put on your sweater."

Natalia jumped to her feet and hurried across the clearing. Away from the fire, she was chilly, and she broke into a run. She picked up a piece of wood and carried it back to the fire, then ran over to the rock and pulled on her sweater. She buttoned it up and ran back to the fire. She dropped back to the ground and held out her hands to warm.

The man settled down, resting his back against the rock. He looked tired, Natalia thought. His face had a day's beard, brown prickles against his skin.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

He looked down at her, frowning. He had a scary face when he frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"When your beard grows, does it hurt?"

"When your hair grows, does it hurt?" he asked her. She shook her head. "No, it doesn't hurt," he said as he rubbed his hand over his chin. It made a raspy sound in the quiet of the night.

Natalia looked back at the fire. Steam was rising from the little pail, and she could smell good smells over the wood smoke.

Out in the forest, an owl hooted, then a fox screamed. Any other night, Natalia would be tucked away tightly in her little tree house in the darkness, curled up, hoping the leshy wouldn't come to get her that night.

But on this night, Natalia was warm, she had eaten food and would soon get to eat more, and there was a fire for her to enjoy.

"Let's see how dinner is coming along," the man said after a while. He used a stick to pull the pail away from the fire, then dipped a spoon into the pail, stirred, and lifted the spoon to his lips. Natalia watched as he tasted the soup. He made a face.

"Is it good?" Natalia asked, wriggling in anticipation.

"It's salty," he said. He stirred the soup again, then pushed the pail back towards the fire. "Just a few more minutes."

"Can you tell me a story now?" Natalia asked.

"You and your stories," the man muttered. "Yes, I will. Sit down and be quiet."

Natalia hunched over, wrapping her hands around her knees. She was so excited to hear a new story!

"Well." The man coughed. "Once there was a little girl named Snow White."

"Was she nice?" Natalia asked.

He glared at her. "No interruptions, soldier!"

Natalia clapped her hands over her mouth to keep herself from giggling at his expression.

"Snow White's mother, the queen, was jealous of Snow White, and one day she told her huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and cut out her heart."

Natalia shivered. She didn't think she liked this story very much.

"When the huntsman took out his knife to kill Snow White, she begged him not to, and he didn't really want to kill her in the first place, so he told Snow White to run away and he went back to the castle and told Snow White's mother that he had killed Snow White."

"I'm glad he didn't kill her," Natalia said.

"Snow White was glad too," the man said. He reached over to stir the soup again. "She ran deep into the forest where no one could find her. She only had the dress she was wearing and she didn't have any food, and soon she was lost in the woods."

"She should have stayed on the road," Natalia said, getting up on her knees. "If she stayed on the road she wouldn't get lost."

"But she didn't want the Queen's men to find her," the man said. "So she was in the woods with no food, and she was scared. Do you think she cried?"

Natalia put her thumb in her mouth, thinking. "Only a little," she eventually said, speaking around her thumb. "Only because she was scared."

"Exactly," said the man. "And when she was deep in the woods, she found a little house. She went into the house, and found a little kitchen and a little fireplace and seven tiny beds, just big enough for a little girl her size. And then?" He sat back. "Snow White laid down one on of those beds and fell right to sleep."

"Whose bed was it?" Natalia asked, breathless with anticipation.

"Snow White found out, when she opened her eyes, and found, staring down at her…" the man paused, then said, "Seven little dwarves!"

Natalia gasped. "Were they good or bad?" she demanded.

"Mostly good, as people can be," said the man. "And Snow White said, 'don't hurt me' and the dwarves asked her why she was there. Snow White explained that her mother had tried to have her killed, and the dwarves agreed that this wasn't a nice thing for a mother to do." The man pulled the pail away from the fire and tasted the soup again. This time, he left it in front of him as he stirred. "Snow White asked if she could stay with the dwarves and they said yes, as long as she did all the housework and the cooking."

"That's not fair!" Natalia objected. "There were more of them!"

"That's just what Snow White said. She said there should be an appropriate division of labour and she would do the housework one day of the week."

Natalia nodded. Good for Snow White.

"The dwarves said that they already had enough mouths to feed so Snow White said she would go out every day into the forest and gather fruit for everyone to eat. Then the dwarves said she could stay, and so she did."

"Then what happened?"

"Snow White stayed with the dwarves all summer. Back in the castle, Snow White's mother heard a rumour that the huntsman hadn't killed Snow White after all, so she dressed up like an old grandmother and went into the woods and tried to find Snow White."

"Did she find her?" Natalia asked, fearful for the little girl.

"You tell me. How should the story end?"

Natalia thought hard. Then she said, "Her mama shouldn't find her because her mama is bad. Snow White should live with the dwarves in the forest forever."

"She should?"

"Yes," Natalia said, warming to her tale. "Snow White can find berries in the forest and she can grow a garden and light fires and bake bread and never ever get caught by the bad mama."

"That's a good ending," the man said. He took a spoonful of soup. "Come here, it's time to eat.

The soup was very salty, like the man had said, and it was warm and the bits of potato were fun to chew on. Natalia had one spoonful, then the man had several bites, slurping from the spoon.

Natalia took her turn with the spoon again, chewing on a chunk of fish. It was almost too salty, but she didn't complain. She hadn't eaten anything salty since she had come to the forest, and it tasted good.

"Drink something," the man said, holding out his canteen. Natalia obediently took a sip of water. "Eat some bread too."

"I don't know if I can," Natalia said, taking the small hunk of bread from the man. "I'm so full!"

"You've had three bites." The man scraped the last of the soup out of the pail.

"It was a lot." Natalia put the bread in her dress's pocket. "I'll save that for tomorrow."

The man licked the spoon. "That's a smart idea, soldier. Always ensure you preserve rations to stretch out over your entire mission."

Natalia nodded sleepily. "What else do soldiers do?" she asked.

"Didn't your father tell you?" The man placed another branch on the fire.

"He may have, but I think I forgot." It had been a very long time since Natalia's papa told her any stories. Even before he went away, he was always too tired to tell her any stories or sing her any songs.

The man poked at the fire, sending up a spray of sparks. "Soldiers always help other soldiers," he said. "You're good at that. And they're always careful to hide their presence in the field."

"I can do that," Natalia said. Her eyelids were getting heavy. It had been a very long day, and she had worked hard. And now she was warm from the fire, and she was so sleepy.

"I know you can." The man leaned back against the rock, stretching his feet out towards the fire. "You can do many things, for someone so small."

"I'm not small," Natalia objected half-heartedly. She blinked her eyes hard to stay awake. "I'm big like a wolf."

Elsewhere in the forest, an owl hooted as the wind picked up, whistling through the trees. Natalia stared at the fire, wondering if this was what soldiers did at night, if this was what her papa had done during the war.

"Natalia."

Hearing her name made Natalia open her eyes. She hadn't been sleeping, not really. The fire was burning lower now, red embers glowing in the night.

Beside her, the man was looking down at her. She looked back at him, so sleepy.

"Where did your mother go?"

The question made Natalia's chest hurt. She sat up, suddenly wide awake. "I don't know," she said.

"When was the last time you saw her?"

Natalia could feel hot tears prickling in her eyes. "A long time ago," she said, rubbing her eyes. "I woke up and mama was gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Everything was gone," Natalia said. She got up onto her knees, her toes digging into the dirt. "All our things, and Petrov and Ana and mama and everything."

Natalia remembered now, waking up on that cold morning in the empty house. Everything had been so quiet; very different from other mornings, when Ana would cry and fuss, while Petrov ran around the house making noise.

Natalia had gotten out of her small bed and dressed, then walked around the small house calling for her mama. But there was no one in the house.

Everything was gone; Petrov and Ana's clothes, mama's basket, even the small photographs of papa and Ivan that mama had kept by the stove.

There was a piece of paper on the table. Natalia had picked it up, looked it over, but it was only words, and Natalia couldn't read any of the words, only some of the letters.

"What did you do?" the man asked, poking the fire. The embers glowed red.

"I went outside," Natalia told him. She had taken the paper with her as she walked out the front door, into the cool spring morning. She'd called for her mama again, looking all the way around the house, then out onto the road. "Mama wasn't there."

Natalia hadn't been scared, just confused. Where had her mama gone?

"Then the old lady in the house next door came outside, and she asked me why I was still there, because she had seen my mama go down the road with Petrov and Ana before the sun came up."

The old woman had tried to get Natalia to come into her house, but Natalia had always been scared of her and so instead she ran off down the road after mama, the paper clutched firmly in her hand. Maybe mama had just forgotten her; she'd come back when she remembered about Natalia.

"What did you do?" the man asked.

"I went to find mama." Natalia rubbed at the tears on her cheeks. "I walked all day but I couldn't find her."

Hardly anyone paid any attention to a little girl walking barefoot on the road. As she got further away from home, and the road grew unfamiliar, Natalia had hurried to follow behind a herd of sheep being driven down the road. There had been a nice dog with the sheep, and Natalia had given him a pat on his head.

She had stopped to rest by a stream, taking a nice long drink. She was very hungry, but she had to find her mama.

Then she'd started walking again.

Several times, she was scared and afraid, but she couldn't stop looking for mama. After all, soon mama would remember about Natalia and come back down the road to find her.

When darkness fell, Natalia hid in a barn by the roadside, eating a carrot from the horse's trough, and slept in the hay, the paper folded up tight in her dress pocket.

"Why didn't you ask anyone to help you?" the man asked. "To find your mother?"

Natalia shook her head firmly. "Mama said never to talk to strangers. If we did, they'd find us."

The man frowned. "Who would find you?"

"Bad people."

The man stared at Natalia. "How long did you look for your mother?" he asked after a minute.

"Forever." Natalia had walked for days and days, searching for mama and Ana and Petrov. She'd walked for more days than she could count, but she didn't see any sign of them, and every day she grew hungrier. "I thought I heard Ana crying sometimes, so I kept looking for them."

"When was the last time you thought you heard Ana?"

Natalia sniffled. "When I was in the village." She pointed down the mountain. "I thought I heard Ana so I ran into the village but I couldn't find her. Then I was hungry so I took a carrot from a pig's trough and a man got mad at me and called me a thief and chased me with a whip so I ran away."

She had been so scared when the big man ran after her. She had run as fast as she could, up into the forest. She could still hear the man running, so she didn't stop, not until she couldn't run anymore.

She'd collapsed onto the ground, still sprinkled with a bit of winter snow, and cried and cried and cried because she finally knew she would never find her mama.

In front of the fire, Natalia started to cry. "Stop that," the man said, pulling her over to his side. He put his hand on Natalia's back. "Soldiers never cry."

Natalia tried to hold in her tears, but she was so tired and so sad that she just couldn't. The man lifted her up onto his lap and rocked her, humming softly under his breath. She cried until she had no tears left to cry, then Natalia gripped a handful of his jacket and looked into the fire, so unhappy.

She missed her mama.

"Why didn't you go back to the village?" the man asked after a long time.

"I didn't want the man to chase me again," she said.

"He sounds like a bad man, coming after a child like that." The man shifted Natalia onto his knee, and held her chin so she was looking at him. "Do you think he was a bad man?"

"I guess so," Natalia said. She wiped her eyes. "I didn't mean to steal his carrot."

"That's not what communism is about," the man said. "We're all comrades, and we help each other. Did you know that?"

Natalia nodded. "Papa always said that."

"That's right. And a man who doesn't share a carrot with a hungry child, well, that's a bad man."

Natalia put her thumb in her mouth, staring at the man. His face was shadowed in the faint firelight.

"Do you know what should happen to bad people?"

Natalia shook her head.

"Sometimes, bad people need to be punished. If they hurt someone else, or steal from them, and if they are really bad people. Do you agree?"

Natalia blinked. "I guess."

"That's what soldiers do," the man said as he pulled Natalia against his side. "That's what I do, I stop the bad people."

"Am I a bad person?" Natalia asked, staring at the fire.

"No, you're not. Can I ask you something?"

Natalia nodded.

"Do you really want to be a soldier?"

Natalia thought. She wanted to be strong and brave and never ever get scared. "Yes."

"Will you help me stop the bad people, like a soldier would?"

Natalia took in a deep breath. The wind had gone silent in the forest, as if even the trees waited for her answer. "I will help you," she promised the man.

"Good. You're a good girl," the man said quietly. "Now go to sleep, little girl. Soldiers need their rest."

In the darkness overhead, the trees sighed and rustled their leaves. The trees had heard Natalia's promise.

* * *

Check out this awesome image for this chapter from Riana-One!

[Check it out on Tumblr](http://riana-one.tumblr.com/post/64251117549/natalia-took-in-a-deep-breath-the-wind-had-gone)


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

**The Second Day**

Natalia opened her eyes. What had woken her? Was there something out there in the forest?

It was growing light inside her tiny forest house; she had slept so late! And she didn't remember going to sleep in her little forest house. There had been a fire, and the man, and Natalia didn't know if that had been real or not.

Yawning, Natalia sat up. As she did so, something covering her fell to the side. It was the soldier's empty rucksack, over her like a blanket.

Natalia smiled. That was a nice thing the man had done, letting her use his rucksack like that! He was nice, even if he did talk gruff and mean sometimes.

After pushing the leaves of her bed back into the corner, Natalia climbed up the stone wall. In the clearing, fog lay thick upon the mountain.

Natalia walked around her tree house. Underneath the lean-to, the man lay on his side, asleep. He had one hand curled around his rifle.

She frowned. It was awfully late for him to be sleeping. When her papa had been alive, all the men woke before dawn to work in the barns. Maybe soldiers slept late because they didn't have any cows to milk.

Crouching down by the man's head, Natalia whispered, "Are you asleep?"

Never opening his eyes, the man mumbled, "Go away. Go find something to eat."

Natalia patted the man's cheek. "If you want," she said, as he grunted sleepily, batting her hand away. Taking care to be as quiet as a mouse, Natalia walked across the clearing to the fire pit. The ashes were cold, and her pail sat there, cold, with the remains of the previous night's soup.

Natalia made a face at the pail. The man was no housekeeper; even Natalia knew you were supposed to soak a pan overnight to make cleaning it easier in the morning. Shaking her head, Natalia picked up the pail and skipped down the path to the rusalka's river.

She rinsed and filled the pail with water and left it to soak in the shallows, while she ran up and down the river bank, looking around for things to eat. She had eaten all the ripe berries down the river a few days before. The only thing she could find up the riverbank were mushrooms, and Natalia had learned enough from her mother to know that those were the bad mushrooms. And Natalia had looked everywhere else in the forest.

That was, everywhere else in the forest on _this_ side of the river.

Natalia skidded to a halt. She looked across the river, at the dark trees with their branches hanging lazily over the water.

She had never been on the other side of the river.

Natalia balled up her hands in her skirt. There was a place up the river where the water was shallow, and she could walk across if she held her dress over her head. But then the rusalka could get her!

Turning, Natalia ran back to where she had left the pail. Using a broken twig and sand from the river bottom, Natalia scrubbed the pail clean, and even managed to get most of the black char off the pail's outside.

Washing her hands one last time in the water, Natalia stood up, and faced the river.

She had to do something. The man had told her to find food, and there wasn't any food left on this side of the river.

She was scared of what the rusalka might do to her; might take her by the ankles and pull her deep under the water forever, like the rusalka did to bad children who didn't stay away from the river.

But Natalia had been given an order.

She faced the river, her hands balled into fists. She was a soldier, and she couldn't be afraid.

Picking up her pail, Natalia marched up the river, around the old tree, over the meadow, past the jagged rock. Here, the river was wider, but shallower than the spot near her path. Natalia set down her pail and removed her sweater, hanging it on an outstretched branch. "I'll get you later," she said to her sweater, before picking up her pail once more and wading into the river.

She moved cautiously, placing each foot with care before she took the next step. After a few steps, the water was over her ankles; a few more, and the water was up to her knees.

The water flowed clear and slippery around her legs, and she didn't see the rusalka under the water, but she could be hiding just out of sight. That's what Petrov said had happened to Ivan, when Ivan was a bad boy and didn't listen to mama to stay away from the river. Petrov said the rusalka had hid out of sight until Ivan was too deep in the water to save himself.

Natalia bunched her skirt up around her waist and kept going. The water kept going higher and higher, and Natalia had to pull her dress up around her neck as the water lapped at her armpits. But she kept her head high and held her dress with one hand and the pail with the other. Every step she took, she hoped her feet wouldn't slip, that the rusalka wasn't hungry enough to pull her under, that she wouldn't get scared...

The riverbed started to slope upwards, and Natalia climbed carefully. When the water was down below her knees, she dropped her dress and dashed through the water to the river bank. Panting, Natalia looked out over the river, burbling quietly along.

The rusalka hadn't taken Natalia like she had taken Ivan.

Not wanting to linger near the water, Natalia ran up the low slope. On this side of the river, the grass was green and soft, and the trees were spaced further apart than on her side of the river. Natalia was so happy, she skipped up the hill, between the trees.

It was so wonderful! The sun was shining, the leaves were turning red and golden in the trees. Once, Natalia saw a mama fox and baby foxes, darting away across the forest floor. She waved at them as they went.

A few more steps, and Natalia stopped dead. There, up at the top of the slope, were _berry bushes_!

Natalia ran as fast as she could up the hill. The bushes were laden with unpicked berries, all deep purple and ripe. Natalia picked one juicy berry and popped it in her mouth. The berry's dusty skin exploded into rich sweetness, even sweeter than the berries Natalia had found the day before.

"Mmm," she said, and started picking berries in earnest.

Soon, her pail was full, and there were berries left over, so Natalia shoved handful after handful into her mouth. The berries were so sweet, she started to feel thirsty. With one final mouthful, Natalia picked up her pail and walked down the slope to the river. She put her pail on the flat ground and knelt by the river, scooping water into her hands and sipping at it delicately. The clear water was cool over her tongue, and Natalia took one more sip before rinsing her hands. She wet a corner of her skirt and scrubbed at her mouth and face until she felt clean and fresh all over.

With a happy sigh, Natalia picked up her pail and walked up the river, exploring. Over there, she saw a tree that three big branches pointing straight up. And over there, a great big rock sat on its side, one giant crack running right down the middle. Natalia poked a stick into the crack, just in case the rock snapped closed.

After a few minutes, Natalia walked on. The trees were getting closer together, and they were big too; nice old trees with trunks so wide that Natalia couldn't even wrap her arms around them.

Natalia liked trees. She liked the stories Baba Yaga told her of the tree spirits, little girls and boys just like herself who lived in the trees and dressed themselves with leaves and drank sunshine during the day and moonlight during the night to eat. Once, Baba Yaga had said that maybe one day, Natalia would become a tree spirit who lived in the woods.

Natalia wasn't sure she wanted to be a tree spirit. She thought that berries would be tastier than sunshine.

As Natalia walked around a fallen tree, she spotted a big old hollow in the tree, and into that hollow were stuffed a bunch of leaves. Curious, Natalia climbed onto the tree and plucked at the leaves. One by one, they fluttered to the ground. Natalia pulled at one final leaf, and gasped.

Nuts! She had uncovered a squirrel's hoard of nuts!

Natalia cheered out loud. Her pail was full of berries, but Natalia scooped the nuts out of the tree and bunched them into her skirt. When she climbed down from the tree, she held her pail in one hand and her skirt in the other. The nuts bulged in the fabric, and she hoped that the thread in the seams didn't give way!

The soldier would be so proud of her, Natalia thought with satisfaction. She had carried out her mission perfectly. She had found food, and she had been brave. Holding her head high, Natalia walked down to the river.

It took her a little while, but she found the spot where she had first crossed the rusalka's river. The water seemed deeper from this side. What if the rusalka found Natalia? What if she had heard Natalia crossing the first time, and was waiting under the water to drag Natalia under the water?

Natalia put down her pail down on the river bank and thought hard. It would be harder to cross now, as her skirt was full of nuts and her pail was full of berries, even if the rusalka left her alone. How could she do it?

Natalia looked down at her skirt. She didn't want to leave the nuts behind; they were a special treat and the soldier would like them. But she didn't want to leave the berries either, they were delicious and good.

She needed a bigger pail.

Natalia looked back at the river. She could see the spot in the river where she had needed to lift her dress up to her neck. It had been hard, holding her dress and her pail over her head.

Unless…

Quick as a flash, Natalia emptied her skirt onto the riverbank, and pulled her dress off over her head. She laid it flat, scooped all the nuts onto the fabric, then tied it all into a ball and put it on top of the pail. When she lifted the pail's handle, it was tight over her cloth ball.

Before the rusalka could hear her coming, Natalia rested the pail on the top of her head and waded into the river.

The water was cold, but Natalia made herself step slowly and carefully so she wouldn't fall and be swept away. The weight of the pail made the top of her head hurt, but Natalia didn't cry. She was a strong tough soldier now.

The water came up past her belly button, up to her chest. Natalia shivered as she took careful steps, moving even slower than before because she couldn't bend her head to watch where she was going.

She could see the riverbank ahead of her, at her sweater hanging on the branch. She was so close, only a few more steps, and she would be safe on dry land.

Slowly, so she wouldn't slip, Natalia took another step. She put all her weight on the foot in front of her, and readied herself to take another step.

Suddenly, something grabbed her foot and pulled Natalia underwater. Water filled her mouth as she was dragged downriver by the current. The rusalka had her! The rusalka was going to take her under the water like the ruslka had taken Ivan!

Natalia fought and kicked and clawed her way to the surface. When she had her head above water, she kicked at the water to stay in place. The rusalka didn't grab Natalia again to pull her under the water, but Natalia wasn't taking any chances. She grabbed at her pail as it floated past, and she swam as fast as she could to the riverbank.

Choking and coughing, Natalia crawled out of the water. Her chest burned and her throat hurt and maybe she was crying, she didn't know. All she knew was that the rusalka had pulled her under the water of the river, and then let her go.

Her ankle burned where the rusalka grabbed her. Natalia looked down, and saw red welts on her ankle. Almost like a woman's finger marks.

Coughing again, Natalia stood up, holding her pail tight in both hands. She was downstream from where she had left her sweater, and she had to go get it, because Natalia was a strong soldier now and soldiers didn't leave their sweaters behind just because the rusalka tried to pull them under the water.

It took Natalia only a few minutes to find her sweater. Teeth chattering, Natalia pulled on the wool garment over her bare skin. Her dress was still wedged in the pail, the cloth in a tight, sodden ball. As she tried to pull the dress out of the pail, fingers numb, the full weight of her situation hit Natalia.

The rusalka had tried to drown Natalia, like she had Ivan, only Natalia had survived.

With one final tug, Natalia yanked the cloth bundle free of the pail. She spread the dress out, making sure all the nuts were safe. The berries in the pail had been squished on the top layer, and berry juice spread out in a wide stain across the front of the cloth.

Natalia didn't care. She had escaped the rusalka!

Quickly, Natalia pulled on her wet dress, then her sweater. She squished along damply as she carried her pail of berries and skirt full of nuts, up the riverbank towards her little forest house.

She was cold and her chest hurt where she had swallowed river water, but Natalia held her head high as she marched up the hill.

She had survived the rusalka. She was a real soldier now.

* * *

The soldier was still asleep. Natalia was quiet as she laid out the nuts on the rock to dry in the sunshine. She was very good at being quiet. After her papa went away and the rusalka took Ivan, before Ana was born, mama had been sad a lot and stayed in bed and Natalia hadn't been allowed to make any noise.

While the nuts were drying, Natalia shook the berries out onto the rock. The juice from the squished berries stained everything a deep purple, Natalia's fingers and the rock, and everything smelled sweet.

Humming quietly, Natalia licked her fingers clean of the berry juice. Her chest didn't hurt as much anymore.

She wondered if she had time to go see Baba Yaga, but as she looked up at the dark forest up the hill from her little house, Natalia saw the squirrels dash out of the thicket. She frowned. She couldn't go see Baba Yaga _now_ , not when the squirrels had been sent away.

With a deep sigh, Natalia pulled off her sweater and laid it in the sun to dry. She wanted the soldier to wake up so she could show him how she had obeyed the order, and all the food she had found because she was so brave.

Natalia knew she wasn't to wake the soldier, but maybe she could sit and look at him for a while. She sat on the grass beside the sleeping man and rested her elbows on her knees.

When he was asleep, he didn't look mean at all. His hair was brown, and his chin had a little dip in it. Natalia touched her own chin and wondered why. He didn't look like the men from her little village. His eyes were too big in his face.

The man sighed in his sleep, and his lips moved without sound. His right hand tightened around the barrel of his rifle.

Natalia wondered why he wore a glove on his left hand, and not his right hand. She looked down at her hands. Her fingertips were faintly stained with berry juice, and there was dirt under her fingernails.

The leaves overheard stirred in a breeze as the man stirred and opened his eyes. He focused on Natalia and he quickly sat up, reaching for the pistol holstered on his hip. Then, just as quickly, he let his hand fall to the ground, and pushed himself upright. "Damn, child, what are you doing?" he demanded, his voice rough.

Natalia looked at the man as he blinked hard. "You have long eyelashes," she told him. "Like a cow."

The man made a face. "Good morning to you as well." He rubbed his right hand over his face.

Natalia was getting impatient. "I did what you told me," she said, going up on her knees. "Want to see?"

"What did I tell you do to?" the man asked. He looked closer at her. "What happened to you? Why is your hair wet?"

"The rusalka grabbed me," Natalia said. She jumped to her feet and grabbed the man's arm. "Come see!" The man let Natalia pull him up, and together they walked to the big stone. Natalia crawled onto the rock's surface and pointed at the nuts and the berries. "See?"

The man barely glanced at the food. He caught Natalia by the arm and turned her to face him. "What do you mean, the rusalka grabbed you?" he demanded.

"I went into the river because you told me to find food," Natalia said. "And it was fine on the way across because the water only came up to here," and Natalia pointed at her throat. "And then I found the berries and they were _so good_ and I ate lots and then I found the nuts and I had to carry those in my skirt and then when I was crossing the river again the rusalka saw me and she grabbed me and pulled me underwater!" Natalia balanced on one foot and stuck out her other leg to show the man.

He caught her foot in his fingers, his gloved hand still holding onto her arm. He traced the red mark on her ankle with his thumb. When he looked up at her face, he was frowning. "What really happened?" he asked.

Natalia pulled her foot away from the man. "I told you, the rusalka grabbed me!" she insisted, stamping her foot on the rock. "But I got away!"

The man let go of her arm. "If you say so," he said.

"I do," Natalia said. She shook herself all over. Her dress was nearly dry now. "You have to help me open the nuts."

"In a little bit." The man stretched his arms over his head. "I'll be back in a few minutes and we can eat then."

Natalia stood straight and saluted. "Yes, sir!"

The man shook his head as he walked out of the clearing. When he was gone, Natalia jumped down from the big rock and ran over to the small collection of river stones by the tree. She selected her favorite, a purple-grey pebble she could hold in her hand to crack open the nuts, and ran back over to the rock.

Soon, the man reappeared, and Natalia gestured him over. "We eat now."

"Is that so?" The soldier joined Natalia. "Show me what you have here."

Natalia pointed at the berries. "These are good," she said, and demonstrated by putting one in her mouth. The sun-warmed sweetness filled her mouth, and Natalia closed her eyes briefly in delight.

The man picked up a berry and popped it in his mouth. "Hmm," he said. "Not badly done, soldier."

Natalia beamed. He liked them!

"And how about these?" the man went on, turning to the pile of nuts. "Do you think these are any good?"

"I hope so," Natalia said. She held out her pebble. "Do you want to open them?"

The man smiled at her as he removed the glove on his left hand. "I have a trick for that."

Natalia watched, fascinated, as the glove came off to reveal not a hand of flesh, but one of silver. He opened and closed the hand, four metal fingers and one metal thumb.

Natalia put down her pebble and reached for the soldier's hand. When she touched his thumb, it was cool and solid.

"Why do you have this?" she asked, so curious.

He held out his hand flat, and Natalia put her palm on his. Natalia's hand was tiny!

"I lost my arm in the war," the man said after a minute. He curled his hand into a fist, and let Natalia poke at the metal joints.

"Did it hurt?" Natalia asked. She'd cut her arm once, long ago when she was just a little girl, and it had hurt and hurt and hurt and Natalia had cried so much.

The man pulled his hand away from Natalia. "It must have," he muttered. "All right, time for the trick." He picked up one of the nuts. Holding it between his index finger and thumb, he squeezed, and the nut shell cracked, just like that.

Natalia cheered. "That was easy!" she exclaimed.

The man handed the cracked nut to Natalia. She pried the nut out of the shell, and held it up to the light. "Is it any good?" the man asked.

Natalia put the nut in her mouth and bit down. It was slightly bitter and dry, but it was still good. She chewed as the man cracked open the rest of the nuts, tossing the rotten ones into the fire pit.

"You are good at fending for yourself," the man observed. He pried open a nut shell with his teeth. "Who taught you all this?"

Natalia shrugged. She reached for one of the last berries. "I think I always knew it," she said. "Me and Ivan looked for berries all last summer. And papa always told us to look out for the nuts the squirrels hid."

The man took a drink from his canteen, before handing it to Natalia. "Who's Ivan? A friend of yours?"

Natalia shook her head. Thinking about Ivan made her sad. "Ivan was my brother," she said. "The rusalka came and took him away because he was bad and went into the river."

The man stared at Natalia. "Your brother drowned?" he demanded. "When?"

Her tummy was hurting again, like it always did when Natalia thought about Ivan. Hunching over, she said, "After papa went away. Mama told Ivan that he wasn't to play by the river by himself, but he was bad and didn't listen to her and mama found him in the river."

As she spoke, Natalia grew even sadder. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks and her lip trembled, but she wasn't crying. Soldiers didn't cry and she was a soldier now.

Natalia rubbed the tears off her cheeks and angrily reached for another nut. Soldiers didn't cry; they obeyed orders.

Beside her, the man cleared his throat. "Was Ivan older than you, or younger?" he asked.

"He was the same." Natalia spat out the nut; it was too bitter. She put a berry in her mouth to get rid of the taste.

"The same age as you?" the man repeated. His frown was very deep. "Natalia, was this boy Ivan your twin?"

The pain in Natalia's tummy moved up to her throat, and she jumped to her feet. "No one talks about Ivan!" she shouted at the man. "Mama said, _no one talks about Ivan_!"

"All right," the man said. He held out his hands to Natalia, one skin and bone, one metal. "We won't talk about Ivan."

"The rusalka took him away!" Natalia shouted. Now her whole head hurt. "And she tried to take me but I got away!"

The man stood, picked up Natalia. He put her on his hip and held her as he walked across the clearing. Natalia grabbed handfuls of his jacket and held on. Her tummy hurt and her throat hurt and her head hurt but she wasn't crying.

She thought about the piece of paper, folded up carefully in a tiny break in the stone wall of her little forest house. She thought of the words on it; words she couldn't read.

Maybe the soldier could read the words.

As soon as the thought occurred to Natalia, she shook it out of her head. The paper was _her_ paper!

She buried her face in his shoulder as the man carried her around the clearing. She wasn't going to tell him _anything_ about the paper; that was hers only.

"Do you know what I am thinking?" the man asked after a few minutes. Natalia shook her head. "I think that you've been alone for a long time, and that makes you sad."

"I'm not crying," Natalia said, her voice muffled by the man's jacket.

"Of course you're not." The man tapped Natalia's head, and she looked up. "If you're not crying, are you ready for your next assignment?"

Natalia rubbed her eyes. She didn't really feel like playing soldier games any more, but she didn't know what the man would think of her. She shrugged.

"All right." He set Natalia down on her feet. "Your orders are to have a nap."

Natalia looked up, frowning. "I don't want to have a nap!" she exclaimed. "I'm not a baby!"

"You should still have a nap," the man said. He walked over to the lean-to and picked up a small bag, different from the one he used the night before. "Children do. So lie down and close your eyes and go to sleep."

"What are you going to do?" Natalia asked, planting her feet in the dirt. "Are you going to have a nap too?"

"No." The man slung his rifle strap over his shoulder. "I'm going to bathe in the river."

Natalia straightened up in a panic. "You can't!" she exclaimed. "The rusalka will eat you alive!"

The man paid Natalia no mind. "Stay here and lie down," he said. "That's an order."

Natalia stamped her feet on the ground. "Don't you listen?" she demanded. "The rusalka is bad!"

The man went down on one knee. "I need you to listen to me," he said. His face was serious. "I know you had a scare today, but the river isn't a dangerous place if you know how to swim—"

"You're wrong!" Natalia shouted. She dashed across the clearing and hit the man's chest with her fists. "The rusalka grabbed me! She'll find you and take you away!"

The man caught Natalia's arms and gave her a hard shake. "Stop it!" he exclaimed. "You need to grow up! The rusalka isn't real!"

Natalia jerked away from the man and ran across the clearing to the entrance to her little forest house. She slithered down the stone wall, scraping her knee against the rocks, and curled up in the pile of leaves in the corner.

Why wouldn't he listen to her? Why didn't he understand?

Outside, footsteps drew near. The man's shadow fell in the entrance to the little forest house, and Natalia heard him sigh. "Child…" he said, sighing again. "Take a nap. I will be back soon."

Natalia pressed her face against her pulled-up knees as the man's shadow vanished and his footsteps died away.

Why was he being so stubborn?

Natalia rubbed at her arm where the man had grabbed her. She didn't like it when he shook her, but it was all right. Natalia's mama used to slap her all over when Natalia misbehaved, and that was worse.

Taking a deep breath, Natalia stood and climbed out of her little forest house. If the soldier didn't believe that the rusalka would come after him, then he was in danger.

Natalia was a soldier too. She would protect him.

She picked up the sheathed knife from under the lean-to, and ran as fast as she could towards the river.

* * *

She was too late; the man had already undressed and was in the river.

Natalia skidded to a halt by the bushes, undecided. She had been told to have a nap, and she was disobeying an order! But she had to keep the man safe from the rusalka, and she had a knife to do just that.

The man hadn't seen her yet. Clenching her jaw, Natalia hid behind the bushes where she could keep an eye on the river.

So far, the man hadn't gone in too far. He was up to his waist in the water, holding soap in his metal hand as he washed.

The rusalka must not have seen him yet.

Natalia stared at the man as he ducked under the water, then came back up. She'd seen men without shirts on before; especially in the fields when it was summer, but never a man with a metal arm before.

His arm was metal all the way up over his shoulder, gleaming silver in the sunlight. A bright red star was painted on his left shoulder. The arm moved like his other one, though; all big muscles and easy movements.

He wasn't as hairy as the men had been in her village. He didn't have any hair on his back and only a little bit of hair on his chest and stomach. But he did have scars; one thin red gash, barely healed, on his stomach, and three small pink circles on his back.

There was also an old white scar, midway up his back, long since healed.

As Natalia watched, the man ran the soap over his hair and face, then tossed the bar up onto the rocks and ducked under the water. One breath, then another, and Natalia was seized with fear. The rusalka must have grabbed him!

Natalia jumped to her feet and ran screaming towards the water, brandishing the knife. She wasn't going to let the rusalka take him!

The man's head popped up out of the water. "What are you doing?" he demanded, standing. He was still waist-deep in the river. "What the hell are you screaming for?"

Natalia came to a stop by the edge of the water, lowering the knife. "I thought the rusalka got you," she said, putting her thumb in her mouth.

The man glared. "Stop talking about the rusalka!" he said angrily. "I thought I told you to sleep!"

"I don't want to!" Natalia said back, feeling angry herself.

The man lowered himself to his chest in the water. "Go back to the camp, child. Now!"

"I won't!"

The man narrowed his eyes. Natalia glared back. After a minute, the man shook his head. "What kind of a mission is this?" he muttered to himself. He crouched back in the water, rubbing at the soap on his skin. "Children and ghosts in the forest."

Natalia's eyes grew wide, and she clutched the knife handle. "There are ghosts?" she squeaked. She didn't like ghosts, not one bit!

The man ducked under the water, rubbing at his short hair. He surfaced after a minute, wiping water out of his eyes. "You think a water spirit is trying to eat you, and you get stuck on ghosts?" he asked as he started towards the riverbank.

Then, without any warning, the man fell, splashing hard into the water and disappearing under its surface.

Natalia screamed again. She ran into the river, water splashing her legs. "Let him go!" Natalia yelled to the suddenly quiet river. "Let him go, you can't have him!"

Another moment of horrible stillness, and then a commotion a ways downstream as the man broke the surface of the water, gasping for breath and arms churning as he swam towards the riverbank. Natalia ran to meet him, as he stumbled out of the river onto dry land.

"She almost got you!" Natalia exclaimed.

Breathing heavily, the man wiped water out of his eyes. "I slipped," he said, but his voice was unsteady. "That's all. I slipped."

Natalia pointed at the man's leg. Angry red gashes wrapped around his calf, just like a woman's finger marks. "It was the rusalka!"

The man ran his hands through his hair as he walked over to his clothing. "It wasn't the rusalka," he said. He picked up his undershirt to dry himself off. "My foot slipped."

Natalia put the knife down beside the soldier's rifle. "You don't know what happened, but I know," Natalia said.

The man held up a warning hand. "Child, I swear, if you don't stop talking about the rusalka, I will beat you," he said angrily.

Natalia glowered at the man, but she didn't say any more. If he didn't want to believe her, that was his own fault. She sat on a rock and crossed her arms and stared at the man.

He set about dressing in his old clothing. His metal arm moved easily as he put on his underwear, his trousers, and then buttoned up his shirt. Natalia couldn't be sure, but she thought his fingers shook slightly as he did up the final button.

When that was done, he slung his rifle on his shoulder, tucked the sheathed knife into his pocket, and picked up his socks and boots into his metal hand.

His other hand, he held out to Natalia. "Will you come with me?" he asked.

"Are you going to beat me?" Natalia asked, her voice small.

"Of course not. You're too tiny for that."

After a moment, Natalia got to her feet, and slipped her hand into the soldier's bigger one. His palm and fingers were warm, in spite of the water's chill.

Together, they walked up the hill to the clearing. Once there, the soldier laid his damp undershirt in the sun to dry. Natalia crouched down by the fire pit as the man leaned the rifle against the tree before rummaging in the small pile of belongings under the lean-to.

"Here we are," he said after a minute. He emerged with a small comb in his hand. "Now, let's see." He combed his hair back from his face. "How is that?"

"You look nice," Natalia said politely.

"How about this?" He combed his hair forward, over his forehead.

Natalia giggled. "That's silly."

"We can't have that." The man parted his hair in the middle, and combed it flat on each side of his head.

Natalia giggled harder. He looked so funny!

"Or this?" He combed his hair straight up, and twisted it into a few little spikes.

Natalia was laughing out loud now. "You have silly hair!"

The man sighed dramatically. "We can't have that." He used his fingers to flatten out his hair. "How is that?"

"Messy," Natalia declared.

"Messy? I can live with that." He held the comb out to Natalia. "How about you?"

"What about me?"

"Your hair is tangled. Do you want some help to comb it?"

Natalia caught up a handful of her hair and looked at it. True, her hair was rather tangled. She tried to untangle a lock with her fingers, and it pulled unpleasantly. She stuck out her lower lip at the sudden pain. "I don't like that," she said.

"Do you want to try?" the man asked.

Natalia considered this. "Do soldiers have tangled hair?" she asked.

"No, they don't."

Natalia set her lips together. "Will it hurt?" she asked hesitantly.

"It might. But I will be careful."

After a moment, Natalia nodded. She turned around to let the soldier comb her hair. Instead, the soldier caught Natalia up around the waist and carried her like a sack of potatoes over to the big rock. Natalia was giggling again when the man set her down, and sat behind her.

True to his word, he was very careful with her hair, and it only hurt a little bit. It took him a long time to comb out all the knots in her hair, and there was a little pile of leaf bits on the rock when he was done. In the afternoon sun, Natalia's hair was bright red, and so soft under her fingers. She liked her hair.

"Do you want braids?" the man asked after he laid aside the comb.

"Yes please!" Natalia exclaimed. "You did that good. Do you have a little girl?"

"No," the man said, his voice curt.

"Do you have a sister?"

"Why do you ask so many questions?" the man demanded as his fingers deftly plaited Natalia's hair into two long braids.

"Because there are things that I don't know!" Natalia told him. "How can I know things unless I ask?"

"Why not just let adults tell you what you need to know?"

"Grown-ups never tell me things I want to know." Natalia held the braid ends while the soldier cut two small lengths of string from his trouser cuff. "Except Baba Yaga, she tells me interesting things."

"What kind of things?" the soldier asked as he tied the string around Natalia's braids.

"Like where to find berries, or about the children who live in trees and eat sunshine," Natalia explained. She let the man help her down from the rock.

The soldier went to the lean-to, and rummaged around. When he stood, he had the binoculars in his hand. "Is there anything I can say to make you stay here and take a nap?"

Natalia crossed her arms over her chest. "No!"

"Then you will have to come with me so you don't get into any trouble. How good are you at hiking in the mountains?"

"I'm very good at that," Natalia said quickly. She swung her arms wide. "I can go everywhere!"

"Even without shoes?" the man asked as he sat to lace up his boots.

"Yes!" Natalia balanced on one foot and held out her other foot. "See?"

The soldier finished lacing his boots. "I see a little girl with dirty feet." He stood. "Come along."

Natalia dashed over to the soldier's side. The man clipped his canteen on to his belt, and they were off. It was a wonderful afternoon. The forest was quiet and sunny, and the tree leaves shone in reds and golds.

The soldier showed Natalia all sorts of wonderful things, like how to track an animal by its footprints; how to know what sort of tree it was by the bark. He told her about the kinds of rocks, and about different types of dirt. Natalia asked all kinds of questions as they walked, and he answered most of them. Only a few times did he groan and grumble and tell her to stop bothering him.

After a long walk, they came to one of the big cliffs overlooking the valley. Natalia had only been this way a few times. She didn't really like the cliffs, but there were lots of big trees here where she could play.

The soldier directed her to stay away from the edges as he settled himself at the side of one big tree, pulling out his binoculars.

"What are you doing?" Natalia asked, distracted by the pretty flowers down in the meadow.

"Reconnaissance," the man said. He put the binoculars to his eyes, and peered down into the valley.

"I don't know what that means." Natalia saw the man was paying her no mind, and ran down to the meadow to pick flowers.

Natalia loved flowers. She loved the pretty ones, and the ones that smelled good, and all the other ones. She picked a bouquet of flowers and carried it around with her, pretending she was a princess in one of the old fairy tales. In those stories, there was always a prince to come rescue the princess, but Natalia didn't play out that part. She didn't need anyone to rescue her, she was a smart soldier and didn't need to be rescued.

In fact, playing a princess soldier sounded even more fun!

Natalia put her flowers by the base of a tree, and found some pebbles and pieces of bark and proceeded to have a princess soldier tea party, complete with songs. It was fun to play pretend in the pretty meadow with its flowers and the fuzzy bees droning lazily around.

Once or twice, Natalia grew thirsty, and she ran over to the soldier hidden behind the tree. He handed her his canteen and sternly told her to be quiet, then went back to looking down into the valley.

Natalia didn't mind. She just capped the canteen and went back to her tea party.

The shadows were growing long when the soldier came over to Natalia. He had his canteen strapped to his belt and his binoculars stowed away. "Come along," he directed Natalia. "We are leaving now."

Natalia said goodbye to her tea party, picked one flower out of the bouquet and tucked it in a buttonhole of her dress, and followed the soldier across the meadow.

The walk back to the clearing took a lot longer than the walk out had taken. Natalia soon grew tired, falling behind the soldier.

"Come on," the man said after he stopped for the third time to let Natalia catch up. "I thought you said you were a good hiker."

"I am," Natalia objected. "But your legs are too long."

The man shook his head. "I don't have time for this," he said. He picked Natalia up under the arms, and swung her up onto his shoulders. "Don't pull my hair," he ordered.

Natalia perked up right away. She was so high! It was fun to see how fast the ground moved under the soldier's feet. She was careful to not pull on the man's hair, but she did put her hands flat on his head to keep steady. He in turn held her ankles so she didn't fall off his shoulders.

"This is fun!" Natalia said as they hurried across the rocky plain at the base of one cliff.

"That's easy for you to say; you're not doing any work," the man said. He slowed to a stop. "Down you get."

He lifted Natalia off his shoulders, straightened his shirt, then helped her climb back up into a piggyback hold.

"Don't choke me," he warned, and set off at a run.

Natalia bounced along as the man ran lightly over the fields and hills, among the trees. This was even more fun than riding on his shoulders, because they were going so fast!

In no time at all, they arrived back at Natalia's clearing. The man let Natalia slide to the ground, then he rested his hands on his knees and breathed heavily. "You're heavier than you look," he said after a minute. He straightened up. "Go put your sweater on, it's cold."

Natalia obliged. "Are we going to have a fire tonight?" she asked hopefully. "Can you tell me a story? Will you make soup?"

The man put his binoculars away. "Yes, perhaps, no." He retrieved his rifle. "I'm going to get water from the river."

Natalia picked up her pail. "I'll go with you, in case the rusalka is still mad at you."

The man sighed. "I am too tired for this," he muttered. "Fine."

And together, they walked down the trail to the river. The rusalka didn't rise up and attack, and soon enough Natalia and the soldier were back in the clearing.

While they waited for darkness to fall, Natalia gathered the dried grasses into the fire pit, then watched as the man cut small shavings from a branch for kindling. As the light faded, the soldier lit the fire, and Natalia settled back against the big rock with a happy sigh.

"I'm going to make tea," he told her as he pushed the pail, half full of water, into its spot in the fire pit. "Do you want to eat food now?"

"We don't have any food," Natalia pointed out. "All the berries are gone."

"That is true," the man conceded. "Why don't you go over there and get the small green bag?"

Natalia jumped up and ran over to the lean-to. She picked up the soldier's small green bag, where he had kept the potato they had eaten the previous night, and ran back to the fire.

The man took the bag from Natalia. "I wonder what we have in here…" he mused, reaching into the bag. He pulled out a small flat object, wrapped in cloth, and handed it to Natalia.

She unwrapped it. "Crackers!" she exclaimed with a smile.

"Very good." The man pulled the next object out of the bag. "What about this one?"

Natalia took the object, and unwrapped the white paper. She nearly dropped it in surprise. "A sausage!" she shouted, jumping up and down. "You have a sausage!"

"I do," the man said, taking the sausage from Natalia. "What do you say, should we have this for dinner tonight?"

Natalia clasped her hands together. "Yes, please," she whispered.

She watched, breathless with anticipation, as the soldier speared the sausage on the end of a stick and held it near the fire to cook. It had been so long since Natalia had eaten a sausage! Long before she left her home in search of her mother; food had been scarce then, even with papa and Ivan gone, and sometimes Natalia and Petrov and mama went hungry for days.

Now, the sausage sizzled and popped in the heat from the fire. Natalia thought she couldn't stand the waiting!

After _forever_ , the man took the sausage away from the fire and used his knife to cut a bit off the end. He blew on it to cool it, then he held out the slice to Natalia. "Do you want to try it?"

Natalia took the sausage from the knife's point, nearly burning her fingers, and nibbled. It tasted so good, all salty and greasy. It was the best thing Natalia had ever tasted.

Slowly, they ate the sausage, then the crackers. When they were done, Natalia leaned against the rock, warm and full and happy.

"Are you going to tell me a story now?" she asked the man as he sprinkled tea leaves into the water in the pail.

He sighed, rolling his eyes to the night sky. "If you want," he said, in the voice of the long-suffering.

As the fire burned down, he told her the story of the Cinder girl, and of little Red Hood who escaped the wolf. Then he told her a story she had never heard before, of a girl named Dorothy who had a little dog, who went to a magical land and wore red shoes and had to kill a witch. Privately, Natalia thought the story was wildly improbable; what kind of scarecrow could _talk_? but she liked it nonetheless and she clapped when Dorothy and her little dog got home.

Natalia was growing drowsy now. It had been a long day, and she had walked farther than she had in so long.

"Natalia," the man said, as Natalia's eyelids closed. She opened her eyes and blinked at him, sleepy. His eyes appeared unnaturally bright in the firelight. "Do you remember what you said last night? That you would help me stop a bad person, like soldiers do?"

Natalia nodded, unable to keep from blinking.

"Tomorrow, will you help me, soldier?"

"I will," Natalia said, making herself open her eyes for a brief moment.

The man smiled at her then, and patted her on the head. "You're a good little soldier, Natalia."

"I beat the rusalka today," Natalia mumbled. She crawled over to the soldier's side, putting her head on his knee.

"That's true."

Natalia stared at the fire until she just couldn't keep her eyes open any longer. "I like you," she whispered to the man. "You're my friend."

And maybe it was her imagination, but as she fell asleep, she thought she heard the soldier say, "I'm sorry this is the way it has to be, Natalia."

And she slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be sure to check out a [wonderful image for Chapter 1, from Riana-One :)](http://riana-one.tumblr.com/post/64251117549/natalia-took-in-a-deep-breath-the-wind-had-gone)


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

**The Third Day**

When Natalia woke, it was light outside, and her head ached.

Natalia climbed the wall of her little forest house, emerging into the clearing. Already the sun was high above the trees in a bright blue sky.

Rubbing her eyes, Natalia looked around. The soldier lay under the lean-to beside the tree, holding onto his rifle. He was fast asleep.

Natalia crouched next to his head, watching him breathe. He was frowning in his sleep. After a few minutes, Natalia stood up. Her tummy rumbled, weird and icky, and her tongue felt thick in her mouth.

Maybe she was thirsty.

Natalia walked over to the fire pit to retrieve her pail. The cold dregs of the soldier's tea lay at the bottom. Natalia made a face. She certainly wasn't going to drink _that_.

Natalia carried the pail out of the clearing, down the path to the rusalka's river. She hoped that the rusalka wasn't angry that Natalia had escaped the previous day.

The walk to the river helped clear Natalia's head of cobwebs. The day before had been a very confusing day. She had crossed the river and found lots of food, but the rusalka had tried to carry her away. She had tried to save the man from the rusalka, for which he had threatened to beat her. Then he said he didn't mean it and took her for a long walk in the woods and then let her eat his food for supper.

Natalia picked her way slowly down the slope to the river. She didn't feel like running today.

The river sparkled in the bright sunshine. Natalia waded into the water and stopped beside a half submerged rock. As she rinsed the tea out of the pail, she watched the little black leaves float away down the river. Some leaves floated quick and straight, others swirled lazily in the water.

Natalia pushed her sweater up to her elbows, and washed her hands, just as mama had taught her. Then Natalia cupped her hands and scooped up some of the clean river water and brought her hands to her lips, sipping at the cold, clean liquid.

She drank mouthful after mouthful, feeling the coolness down her throat and in her tummy, chasing away the bad feelings. When she felt full, Natalia shook her hands dry and stood up.

"Thank you," she said politely to the river. "Thank you for not carrying me away. Or the man."

The river burbled at her.

"I think he is my friend," Natalia confessed as she scooped up a pail of water. "I didn't ever have a friend before."

The river had no response to this, so Natalia climbed onto the bank, up the hill, and went back to her clearing.

The man was still asleep. Natalia set the pail down in the middle of the clearing and climbed up onto the big rock to think.

She didn't know what to do. She should probably go find some food; after all, she was foraging for two people now. But she remembered the soldier telling her that she was to help him. What if she left, and he woke up and needed her?

Natalia looked around. There, up the mountain in the darkest place, the tree branches were waving invitingly. Natalia perked up. She could go see Baba Yaga! And be back in time to help the soldier!

Quick as a flash, Natalia jumped down from the rock. She ran to the fire pit and dug around in the ashes, until she found one of the rotten nuts from the previous day, not too badly scorched. Dropping it triumphantly into her dress pocket, Natalia grabbed the handle of her pail and dashed up the mountainside.

It took hardly any time at all for Natalia to make her way up the hill, across the stone ledge on the way to Baba Yaga's house. When she arrived, the house was the same as always, silent and still under the tall thick trees.

Natalia knocked on the closed front door, as was polite, before climbing in through the open window. "Good morning, Baba Yaga," she said as she set her pail on the table. "I brought you something!"

Natalia reached into her pocket and pulled out the nut. Carefully, she placed it beside Baba Yaga's hand.

"I found it on the other side of the rusalka's river," Natalia explained as she climbed into the empty chair across the table from Baba Yaga. The old woman paid Natalia no mind, but that was the same as always. "And I found berries and I saw a rock with a great big crack in it, all the way down."

If Baba Yaga could speak, she would have asked Natalia why she crossed the river. Natalia thought hard for a minute. "Because the man told me to find food, and there was no food left on this side of the river."

Baba Yaga would have asked Natalia if the rusalka was angry. Natalia sipped at the water from her pail, setting it back down on the dusty table. In fact, there was dust all around the little hut, on the table and on the floor and all over Baba Yaga. "I think the rusalka was mad because I didn't give her any berries," Natalia decided at last. "Maybe if she was hungry, she could eat the berries and leave me alone."

Yes, Natalia decided, that was a good idea. Maybe the rusalka had been angry that Natalia hadn't shared any of the berries with her. Next time, Natalia would know better.

She smiled at Baba Yaga. "Thank you, Baba Yaga!"

The old woman did not respond.

Natalia couldn't stop thinking about the rusalka. If the rusalka in the river had let her go, and let the man go, maybe she wasn't as bad as the rusalka who had taken Ivan away.

Natalia's leg dangled off the chair, and she kicked it restlessly as she thought about Ivan. "Baba Yaga, I miss mama and Ana, but I miss Ivan most," she confessed. She did not, however, miss Petrov in the least. "Does Ivan miss me?"

She put her head in her hands, her nose tickling at the dust. When Ivan went away, one of the neighbours had told Natalia that Ivan was with God, before someone else shushed that neighbour. Natalia wasn't sure who this God person was, but she hoped he was being nice to Ivan. When she had said this to her mother, mama had gotten very angry and slapped Natalia across the face and Natalia had run away and hid in the cow barn until after dark.

During the long winter, Natalia had missed Ivan so, so much that she wanted to go out to the rusalka's river and see if she could go where Ivan was, but the river had frozen over and Natalia couldn't get through the ice.

The river had just thawed when mama and Ana and Petrov went away, leaving Natalia behind.

Natalia let out a sigh. "Baba Yaga, there's a man in the forest," she said. At Baba Yaga's encouraging silence, Natalia went on. "He's a soldier and he has black clothes and long eyelashes and a metal arm." She held up her left arm to demonstrate. "And he's strong and he can braid hair and I think he's my friend."

Just as Natalia was about to say more, there was a scratching sound outside the hut, and then the door swung open on creaking hinges.

The soldier stood in the doorway.

Natalia scrambled to her feet. "Why are you here?" she cried out, suddenly scared.

The man wasn't looking at Natalia; he was staring at Baba Yaga. "What is this?" he demanded. His voice was loud and he filled the doorway. "Child, what have you done?"

Natalia's fear turned to anger, and she ran at the man. "You can't be here," she insisted, trying to shove him out of the hut. "This is Baba Yaga's house, you can't be here!"

The man caught Natalia around the middle and carried her squirming out into the open space among the trees. "Natalia, what is this?" he asked again as he set Natalia down and took hold of her shoulders. She tried to twist away, but he held her fast. "What has happened here?"

"This is Baba Yaga's house," Natalia tried to explain. "You can't be here!"

If anything, the man's eyes grew even wider in his pale face. "That's your Baba Yaga?" he demanded.

Natalia tried again to free herself, but the man's grip was hard and fast on her arms. "Yes!" she cried out, tears in her eyes at the pain.

The man shook Natalia hard, and turned her to face the hut. From this distance, Natalia could see Baba Yaga clearly in her chair. "That is not Baba Yaga," the man said forcefully. He shook Natalia again. "That is a dead body!"

Scared at the man's sudden anger, Natalia started to cry. "That's Baba Yaga!"

"That is a woman who has been dead for a very long time!" the man shouted. "How could you think this corpse was Baba Yaga? What is wrong with you?"

Natalia turned in the man's grasp and bit down hard on the flesh hand holding her shoulder, at the same time as she kicked at him. Her foot landed hard between his legs, and he let go of Natalia with a yelp of pain.

Still crying, Natalia ran away from the man as fast as she could, darting between the small spaces in the trees, where only a little girl could go.

How had the man found her? How could he come along and ruin everything?

Natalia crawled up the slope of a small rockslide, then ran down the hill on the other side. The trees were tall here, and Natalia knew she was dangerously close to the place the bears lived, but she didn't care. The man had ruined _everything_! Baba Yaga would never trust Natalia again!

At the bottom of the hill, where the sun was warmest, Natalia slowed to a stop, and fell over onto the grass. She was crying so hard that her breath came in heaving sobs.

Natalia knew that Baba Yaga wasn't like other people; that day she found Baba Yaga's hut while searching for food, during those first few days on the mountain, Natalia had been so scared looking at the woman, her face and hands shrunken and dried up under the old-fashioned clothing. The hut was cold and drafty and Natalia had stayed hidden in a corner for the longest time, until she was reassured that the woman wouldn't move. It had to be Baba Yaga, Natalia knew, because Baba Yaga was an old witch from all the fairy tales and only an old witch would live out in the forest and put thoughts into Natalia's head when they spoke.

Natalia had told Baba Yaga everything that had happened to her, about trying to find mama, and the man in the village with the whip, and Baba Yaga had let Natalia take the old pail from the sideboard to go collect food on the mountain. That very day, Natalia had found strawberries and a field of clover and some old nuts lying on the ground, and Natalia had eaten for the first time in many days.

And now Baba Yaga would go away and Natalia would never see her again.

Suddenly, from deep in the woods, came the baying of dogs, and the sound of a shot.

Natalia froze. There was someone in the woods, and they were hunting.

The dogs' barking was getting closer. Natalia scrambled to her feet and started running, this time in true fear. She didn't like dogs; too often in her village had she seen the dogs rip apart squirrels and chickens. What would they do to a little girl?

Another shot echoed in the woods. Natalia stumbled and went sprawling, hitting her head on a tree root. The world spun dizzily for a few moments, but then Natalia climbed back to her feet and kept running. She had to get away from the dogs so they wouldn't find her and eat her up.

Up ahead, Natalia could see a grove of trees, with big strong branches and lots of green-gold leaves.

Behind her, she could hear the dogs barking.

Natalia tried to jump up to the lowest branch, but she fell short. Again she tried, but her legs were too short, her arms couldn't reach the branch.

The dogs were getting closer, Natalia could hear them.

Wild with fear, Natalia took a running start at the tree trunk, and managed to get high enough to grab the branch. She pulled herself up just as two big brown dogs burst into the grove, barking and slavering.

Natalia shrieked and climbed higher, the dogs snapping and snarling at her heels. Up Natalia went, higher and higher in the tree, until the green leaves were thick around her. High up in that tree, Natalia wrapped her arms around the thick trunk and held on tight.

After a few minutes, Natalia could hear voices over the dogs' barking. "What is going on?" a strange voice asked. "Alexi, control your damned dogs!"

Natalia peered down the tree trunk. She could make out two men standing at the base of the tree. The younger man hit one of the big brown dogs, and the dog fell back with a whine of pain.

The other man, grey of hair, was looking up at the tree. "They may have treed something," he said, and when he moved Natalia could see his face.

She clutched at the tree, terror clenching in her throat. It was the man from the village, the man with the whip!

"I can't see anything," the younger man said.

"Of course you can't," the older man scoffed. He unslung his rifle from his shoulder and, aiming up into the tree, fired three shots.

Natalia held her breath as one of the bullets bit into the tree branch close to her leg. She waited for the man to shoot again, but he just lowered his rifle.

"It's probably nothing, papa, just a squirrel," the younger man said. He pushed the dogs away from the tree. "These dogs are useless around them."

"That's your own fault, how you train them," the older man said. He turned away and walked back the way he came. After a minute, the younger man followed him.

The dogs still milled about at the base of the tree, but they were less frenzied now. One of them panted and snuffled at the ground, while the other rested his paws on the tree trunk and looked up into the branches.

Natalia wished the dogs would go away.

As if to a sudden cue, both dogs turned to look into the woods. Natalia watched as a spot of black detached itself from behind a tree and came over to the dogs. It was the soldier, walking confidently. The dogs bounded in his direction. The man reached into his pocket and tossed something at the dogs, with they both snatched up and chewed enthusiastically.

The man patted the dogs on their heads and rubbed their bodies and talked quietly to them. At a distant whistle, the dogs bounded off. One of them looped back around to the soldier, and received another head rub before dashing off into the foliage.

The man watched the dogs go, his hands on his hips. Once they were gone, he looked up into Natalia's tree. She didn't move a muscle, but the man still climbed up onto the lowest branch and quickly scaled the tree.

He settled himself on a branch near Natalia and looked at her. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

Natalia shook her head. Now that the dogs and the horrible man were gone, she wanted nothing more than to cry. But she was a soldier, and soldiers didn't cry because they were scared.

The man touched the spot on the branch where the bullet had landed, and his expression grew dark. "Little girl, are you hurt?"

Again, Natalia shook her head. The man reached out and touched her dangling foot.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," he said quietly.

Natalia sniffled. "Those are scary dogs," she said, focusing on the more immediate threat. "I thought they would eat me!"

"They're hunting dogs," the man said. "At least they're supposed to be. They wouldn't eat a little girl, just bark at her."

"They're scary!" Natalia insisted. "And that was a bad man!"

The soldier frowned. "Do you know that man?" he asked.

Natalia nodded. "He called me a thief and came after me with a whip," she said miserably.

The man shook Natalia's foot gently. "Interesting," he said under his breath. "Do you remember when we talked about bad people, and how soldiers help punish the bad people?"

Natalia nodded.

"Well, that man is one of the bad people," the soldier said.

Natalia gripped the tree trunk tighter, even though her arms ached. "Why is he bad?" she asked.

"He is an enemy to the Soviet regime," the man said. He was watching Natalia closely. "Do you know what that means?"

Natalia nodded. She had vague memories of Petrov talking about communism, and about the Soviet revolution that he had learned in school, which she supposed was the way things were supposed to be.

"That's what I do," the soldier went on. "I punish the bad people."

"How?" Natalia asked, but the man didn't answer.

"Come on, let's get you out of this tree," was all he said.

It took some maneuvering, but the man helped Natalia climb down. Only once did he have to help her down a branch. He reached the ground first, and he lifted her off the last branch and set her feet firmly on the ground. He patted Natalia on the head with his metal hand.

"How did you make the dogs go away?" she asked, straightening her dress.

"I've been making friends with those dogs," the man said. He held out his hand to Natalia. After a minute, she took it, and together they walked out of the grove. "Now, if I go up to those dogs, they won't bark at me."

"Why not?" Natalia asked. The man's metal hand was cold in hers, but she didn't let go.

"Because I gave them treats," he said. "I gave them food, so they know they can trust me."

"Why do you want them to trust you?"

The man helped Natalia climb over a large rock. "So I can go to their house at night, and they will not bark at me."

Natalia thought about this for a few minutes. The terrain here was not as familiar as other places on the mountain, and she held the man's hand tightly as they walked.

"Why do you want to go to their house?" Natalia asked. In the distance, she could hear the river burbling quietly.

The man stopped and knelt in front of Natalia. He held her hands in his. "Do you remember when I asked you if you would help me?"

"I remember."

"Good." The man squeezed Natalia's hands gently. "I need your help, to punish the bad people. Will you still help me?"

Natalia squirmed under the weight of his gaze. She wanted to be a soldier, really she did, but the man with the whip still scared her.

"Natalia."

Natalia looked at the man. He was so serious, his eyes blue-green in the sunlight. Hesitantly, Natalia nodded.

The man patted Natalia on the head. "Good girl," he said. Standing, he picked Natalia up and carried her up the hill.

Natalia wrapped her arms around the man's neck. Soon, they emerged from the bush to the side of the rusalka's river. The man set Natalia down, and together they went to get a drink. The man filled his canteen with the cool river water while Natalia splashed her feet in the shallows.

"Little girl," the man called. Natalia dashed over to where he was seated on the grass, and sat beside him. "Can you tell me a story?"

Natalia ducked her head. No one had ever asked Natalia such a thing before! "What kind of story?" she asked, suddenly shy.

The man leaned back in the grass. "Can you tell me the story of how you met Baba Yaga?"

Natalia went up on her knees. "You said Baba Yaga wasn't real," she said, some of her earlier anger at the man returning.

He stretched out his legs. "I did say that," he admitted.

"Why should I tell you anything?" Natalia asked.

He took in a breath, and let it out slowly. "Because I'm asking you nicely."

Natalia sat back down, considering. He was asking nicely, and he had told her stories the night before. Maybe she could tell him a story, and he would understand about Baba Yaga.

So Natalia began, telling about how she was alone in the woods, and came across Baba Yaga's hut. How Baba Yaga had scared Natalia at first, but then Natalia understood how to talk to Baba Yaga, and Natalia had taken the pail from Baba Yaga's house and found food, and then she had found her little forest house, with the tree growing out of the old stone wall, and Natalia had been safe there all summer long.

After Natalia finished her story, the man had sat still, lost in thought. Finally, he said, "Can you promise me something, little girl? Can you promise me that you don't go to Baba Yaga's house until tomorrow?"

"Why?" Natalia asked.

"Because I need you to help me today," he explained as he stood up. He pulled Natalia to her feet. "You can go see Baba Yaga tomorrow. Do you promise?"

Natalia hesitated. "What if Baba Yaga is angry with me?" she asked.

The man pressed his lips together. "I'm sure that Baba Yaga will understand that you have a mission to undertake," he said. "Natalia, do you promise?"

Natalia put her thumb in her mouth, thinking. "I promise," she said around her thumb. "But I will go tomorrow."

The man patted Natalia's cheek. "Tomorrow," he repeated. His voice sounded funny and Natalia didn't understand, but then he took her free hand and together they walked up the path to Natalia's little clearing.

* * *

 

The day passed quickly. The soldier taught Natalia how to tie knots in a piece of twine, and was patient with her even when her little fingers couldn't make the twine go where it should.

He shared luncheon with her, more crackers from his little green bag, and some delicious cheese. Then they had gone exploring down the river, and they found berry bushes with berries high up for the soldier to pick, and they shared those together.

Natalia asked for a story, so the soldier sat her down in the grass in the sun, and he told Natalia the story about a little man who could spin straw into gold, and that man's name was Rumpelstiltskin.

During the story, Natalia's eyes began to close, and she fell asleep listening to the man's calm, low voice.

When she woke, the shadows were growing long all around them.

Seeing she was awake, the man stood up and they both walked back to the clearing. There, Natalia sat on the rock and watched the man prepare for his mission. He took apart his pistol, cleaned it well, and reassembled it with nimble fingers. Then, he tied his boots tight, brushed off his trousers, and buttoned his black shirt to the top button.

The sun was setting over the trees now, as the man threaded his knife onto his belt. "What do you think?" the man asked, pulling on his jacket. "Do I look like a soldier?"

"No," Natalia said. He looked at her in surprise. "Soldiers wear green and brown. You wear black."

"That is a good point," the man conceded. "But then, you don't look like a soldier either."

Natalia looked at her faded dress and her sweater. At one time, the sweater had been yellow; now it was grey with dirt. "We're secret soldiers," Natalia declared.

"That is a good idea." The man retrieved his little green bag. "Let's see what we have for supper."

He emptied the bag onto the rock. All that was left was a strip of dried meat and a small box.

"Open this," he told Natalia, handing her the box. Natalia struggled to open the tiny flap, but eventually she opened the box. Inside were small round lumps. "Have you ever had raisins?"

"I don't know," Natalia said. She put one in her mouth and chewed, surprised at the sweetness. "I like this," she said as she reached for another.

"Good," the man said. He bit a hunk off the dried meat. "You'll need your energy tonight."

"Why?" Natalia asked as she munched on the raisins.

He handed her the canteen. "Because I need you to complete a very special mission," he said.

Natalia drank, and only spilled a drop on her dress. She was getting very good at drinking from a canteen. "What is it?"

The man drank from the canteen, then capped it and put it on the rock. "The bad man, he lives in a house," the soldier explained. "And the house is a secure one. There is a bolt on the kitchen door that latches from the inside." He took a raisin from the small box, and popped it into his mouth. "To get into the house, I need to get through the door. That is where you will help me."

"How?" Natalia asked.

The man shifted around on the rock. In the failing light, Natalia couldn't quite make out his face. "There is a window in the kitchen. It is very small. I need you to go in through the window and open the door."

Natalia clenched her hands in her dress, suddenly uncertain. "Why me?"

"Because you can fit into tiny places," the man said. "Will you help me, soldier?"

Natalia looked down at her hands. She thought about everything that the man had told her about soldiers. Most important of all, soldiers obeyed orders. She swallowed hard. "Yes," she whispered.

"What was that?"

"Yes," Natalia said louder. "Only…"

"What?"

"What if I get scared?"

The man reached out and tapped Natalia on the head. "Remember what you said? That you would help me?"

Natalia nodded. The darkness was growing thick all around them now, and the sky overhead was fading to a deep purple. "I remember."

"Good." The man stood up. "Now, we will be leaving shortly to go to the village. Are you ready?"

"I think so," Natalia said. She slid off the rock. "I will be right back."

She dashed across the clearing to her little forest house and climbed down the stone wall. She wanted to get her bed ready for when they came back from their mission. Quickly, Natalia swept the leaves into a tidy pile, then felt around to make sure that the piece of paper from mama was still in its tiny hiding place.

Satisfied that all was in order, Natalia stood up. She climbed out of her little forest house and back into the clearing. She had taken three steps towards the rock, when she froze.

The leshy stood in the centre of the clearing.

Ice-cold fear washed over Natalia, rooting her to the spot. The leshy was all in black, head to foot, with a black featureless face and big shiny black eyes.

Natalia started to shake as the leshy took a step towards her. "Child, what are you doing?" the leshy asked in the soldier's voice. "What is it now?"

Natalia put her hands over her mouth.

Then the leshy reached up and pulled his eyes off and they came away like goggles, and it was the soldier staring down at her in the faint light. "What is wrong with you?" he asked. He pulled the rest of his face off and it was just a piece of black cloth, covering his real face.

"Are you a leshy?" Natalia whispered, still scared.

The man looked down at the goggles and black fabric in his hands. "Of course not," he said. He knelt down. "Come over here."

It took Natalia a minute, but she eventually got her feet moving and she went over to the man. He held out the black cloth for her to examine.

"It's just a mask," he explained, as Natalia's fingers explored the cloth. "So no one will know my face."

"It's scary," Natalia whispered.

He handed her the goggles. She held them up to her eyes, and exclaimed in surprise. Unlike the goggles she had seen around the farm, these ones showed the dark forest as clear as day, in shades of green and black. "These are just tools, Natalia," he said. "That is all."

Natalia looked at the man through the goggles. "You're scary," she repeated, and stuck out her tongue at him.

The man took the goggles from her. Natalia watched as he put on his mask, and then his goggles. She still didn't like it, but at least now she knew that the man inside the mask was her friend, and not some scary leshy come to eat her alive.

The man finished putting various objects into his pockets, and he held out his hand to Natalia. "Walk with me until it gets too dark," he instructed, and off they went.

It was scary, after dark in the forest, and Natalia clung tight to the man's hand. Her eyes could make out shapes in the forest, and she could walk without problem, but the forest at night was a much different place than it was during the day.

The man walked at Natalia's pace, and helped her over the bigger rocks and trees. After what felt like forever, Natalia couldn't see her hand in front of her face. The man stopped and helped Natalia climb onto his back. "Hold tight," he instructed as he set off walking again. "Don't fall asleep."

"I won't," Natalia promised. She clung tight to the man's collar as they went. The forest was scary, but she had the soldier to protect her from the evil spirits that might like to eat up a little girl all alone.

After a long time, they stopped going downhill. The lights in the distance told Natalia they were close to the village, which was scarier than any forest at night. The man skirted the village, far back from the lights in the tiny windows of the houses. After they had walked around the entire village, the man drew deeper into the trees, and stopped. He helped Natalia down to the ground.

"We need to wait," he said softly into her ear. "You need to be absolutely quiet, don't make a sound. Do you understand?"

Natalia nodded. The man sat beside a tree and pulled Natalia onto his lap. He put his arms around her tight.

"We need to wait until everyone is sleeping," he said in a whisper. "That will be some time. You can sleep if you want, I will wake you when I need you."

Natalia nodded again. She wasn't the least bit sleepy, but she knew better than to speak.

Waiting was very boring. The house closest to them had little lights on in the bottom floor. Natalia watched the lights and wondered when the wait would be over.

The man shifted against the tree, and Natalia yawned. She put her head against the man's shoulder and decided to close her eyes, just for a little bit.

* * *

 

"Child."

Natalia blinked awake. Everything around her was dark and she didn't understand. She opened her mouth to speak, but a hand covered her mouth.

"Quiet," the man said in a nearly silent voice. "Be quiet."

After Natalia nodded to show him she understood, he took his hand away from her mouth. Natalia looked around. The crescent moon was casting faint light over the village. All the houses were dark now, motionless squat shapes under the moonlight.

"Little girl, I need you to sit here and be very quiet," the man said. "I am going to go give the dogs something so they go to sleep."

Natalia nodded again. The man shifted her to the ground, and he stood up slowly. Natalia watched him as he slipped out from the cover of the trees towards the buildings, a shadow in black.

In spite of the faint moonlight, Natalia quickly lost sight of the man. She crouched by the tree and put her thumb in her mouth and waited very patiently, although it was difficult in the dark of the night.

Somewhere in the village, a dog barked once, then fell silent. Natalia crouched lower, pulling her sweater close around herself in the cold of the night. She might even have sucked on her thumb, which only babies did and she wasn't a baby and she'd never tell anyone.

After a very long time, a shadow detached itself from the darkness and walked towards Natalia. If Natalia hadn't seen the face of the soldier behind the mask, she would have been so scared; even knowing, she shook a little as the figure approached her.

The man knelt beside Natalia. "How are you, soldier?" he asked.

Natalia pulled her thumb out of her mouth and looked up at the man's mask. "I'm cold," she whispered.

"Can you keep going?" the man asked.

"Yes," Natalia said. She stood up straight. "I can do it."

The man patted Natalia on the head. "Come along, and don't make a single sound." He took Natalia by the hand and led her into the village.

Natalia had never seen anything as eerie as that silent, darkened village. They walked in the shadows between the small houses, past a chicken coop where the birds fluttered and cooed.

Down the road they walked, to the largest house in the village. Natalia hung back when she spotted the two dogs lying in the yard.

The man knelt at Natalia's side. "They are sleeping," he breathed into her ear. "I gave them a drug so they would sleep, and not bark at us."

Natalia stared at the dogs. After a minute, she nodded, and the man stood up to guide Natalia around the house.

They stopped behind the house, at a solid door. The man lifted Natalia up to the small window so she could see inside. "I need you to climb into the kitchen, and then unlatch the door for me," he said.

Natalia cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the glass at the dark kitchen. Just inside the window was a wooden workbench, on which she could stand.

There was just one problem.

Natalia didn't want to go into that house.

She pulled back from the window and clutched blindly at the man's neck, burying her face in his shoulder and breathing hard.

She felt him put his hand on her back. "It's all right," he breathed into her ear. "There's no one awake in the house." He moved to sit on the step below the door, patting her back. "The dogs are asleep, nothing can hurt you."

Natalia breathed hard against the man's throat. "I'm scared," she whispered.

Instead of getting mad at her, the man kept patting Natalia's back. "Do you want to know a secret about soldiers?" he whispered into her ear. She nodded against his neck. "Soldiers get scared all the time."

Natalia pulled back in surprise.

"It's true." He pushed his goggles up so she could see his eyes in the faint moonlight. "We get scared all the time."

Natalia put her fingers to her lips. She didn't know what to think.

"But do you know what?" he went on. He took Natalia's hand with his gloved fingers. "Even if we're scared, the most important thing is to carry out the mission. We can be scared, but we have work to do."

"Really?" she whispered.

"Yes." The corners of his eyes crinkled up, like he was smiling. "Can you do that for me?"

Natalia sat up straight on the man's arm. "I can," she breathed.

"Good girl." The man set Natalia on the ground. "First, I need to open the window."

He pulled a knife from his pocket; not the big one Natalia had threatened the rusalka with, but a small knife with a thin blade that the man unfolded from the handle. The blade gleamed in the faint moonlight.

Slowly and carefully, he slipped the thin blade between the window panes and eased the blade up. Natalia heard the smallest _snick_ as the window latch fell against the window frame. The man folded the knife away, and carefully opened the window. It opened without a creak. He picked up Natalia. "Are you ready?" he asked.

Natalia nodded. She took a deep breath as the man lifted her through the window, feet first. He held her until she gained her balance, then he carefully let her go.

Natalia was inside the house.

The kitchen was dark and smelled strongly of cooked cabbage. Natalia waited until her eyes adjusted to the faint light from the moon, and she could see around the room.

The kitchen was large, nearly as large as mama's house had been. There was a table with many chairs, and a sink, and a big stove. Natalia herself stood on the wooden workbench.

She turned to the window. The man made an impatient gesture with his hand. Right. Natalia had a mission.

Carefully, she sat on the edge of the workbench, then lowered herself to the floor. She didn't kick anything over or make any noise as she tiptoed to the big door.

The door felt like solid wood under her exploring fingers. She blinked until her eyes could focus, and her heart sank.

The bolt was too high for her to reach.

She reached, she strained, and she just couldn't reach the bolt!

She started to panic. What could she do? She couldn't grow taller just to open the door! The soldier would be so angry with her!

Frantically, she looked around the kitchen. What if she dragged a chair over to the door? On quiet feet, Natalia dashed over to the table, but try as she might, she couldn't move the heavy chair.

In despair, Natalia put one of her braids into her mouth and bit down. What was she going to _do_?

Wait.

Underneath the workbench, were pots and pans. One of them, a large soup pot, sat just on the edge of the shelf.

A big, solid pot.

Natalia hurried across the kitchen. The pot was heavy and difficult to handle, but Natalia carried the pot across the kitchen to the door. She set it down carefully, then turned it upside down. Balancing precariously, she stood on the pot's bottom. Now she could reach the door's sturdy bolt. She pulled it back with a metal scrape, then she jumped down from the pot and carried it back over to the shelf under the workbench. There. Now no one would step on it in the dark.

The door didn't open. Curious, Natalia went to the door and turned the handle. She looked out into the darkness. Where had the soldier gone?

Suddenly, the darkness moved. Natalia opened her mouth to call him over, but he was there, his hand over her mouth. Moonlight glinted off his goggles as he picked Natalia up and lifted her down the step to the ground at the side of the house. "Stay here," he said in a voice quieter than a whisper. "Don't move, and don't come inside."

Only when Natalia nodded did he let Natalia go. He pushed her against the wall, deep in the shadows, and then he crept into the house in noiseless feet. The door swung nearly closed behind him, and Natalia was left alone in the dark.

It was very quiet. In the forest surrounding the vilage, an owl hooted, then fell silent. Natalia hugged herself to keep warm, making sure to obey the soldier's orders, and not move an inch from the wall.

She could see the dogs from here, lying on their sides in the yard. It was so quiet and still that she could hear the dogs breathing, could see their sides moving as they drew breath. Natalia stayed very still, just in case a sound would awaken the dogs.

The wind picked up, and Natalia shivered. She crouched down, covering her bare toes with her skirt against the cold.

She wondered what the man was doing in the house.

The wind swayed through the forest around the village, making trees creak and moan. Natalia wondered if the leshy ever came down to the village in the nighttime, looking for little children to eat. She wrapped her arms around her legs and tried to make herself small, so the leshy wouldn't see her if he was about.

How much time had passed? Natalia had no way of knowing. Overhead, the sky was black, and the moon shone coldly down. In the rest of the sky, tiny stars twinkled down at Natalia.

Maybe it had been ten minutes, Natalia decided. Or an hour. Or three hours, maybe.

One of the dogs snuffled in his sleep.

Suddenly, from within the house, Natalia heard a muffled thump. She straightened up and looked at the door, open just a crack.

She could see a faint light within the house.

Oh no! What if someone was awake? She had to warn the man!

But he had told her to stay put.

Natalia shook her head, and stood. Soldiers protected other soldiers and she was a soldier now, the man had said so. She could protect him!

On quiet feet, Natalia tiptoed to the door, and pushed it open just far enough for her to slip inside. She slipped over the floor, to the far open doorway. It was there she could see the light, faint and flickering like candlelight.

Natalia stopped in the centre of the kitchen, uncertain. What was she to do?

Faintly, she heard a sputtering, a scratching _._

What was that noise?

Natalia was scared again, but she remembered what the man said, that soldiers sometimes got scared and they did what they had to anyway. Clenching her hands into fists, Natalia walked forward, and peeked around the doorframe.

She didn't understand what she saw at first. There was a room with chairs and couches, lit by the light of a flickering candle on a low table. Beside that candle was a big knife, covered in shiny red, a thick red that slid off the blade with a soft _drip, drip_.

Jerky movement, and there, swaying in and out of the candle's soft glow, were two booted feet, and they were twitching.

The room was full of shadows and Natalia didn't know which of the shadows was her soldier. Telling herself to be brave, Natalia stepped into the room.

She could see more clearly now. The twitching feet belonged to a man, and Natalia didn't know why the man was dangling from a rope in the middle of the room. The man's face was horrible, all dark and swollen, and his eyes were gleaming and his hands were grabbing at the rope around his neck as he swayed to and fro.

A shadow stood in the middle of the room, menacing and tall and terrifying. Natalia didn't dare breathe, in case the shadow heard her.

Then the man hanging from the rope reached out, one bloodied hand, and he was pointing at Natalia.

Natalia grabbed handfuls of her skirt, the cloth tight against her palms, as the shadow turned around.

It was her soldier, all shiny black eyes and featureless black face.

Natalia started to shake.

The man on the end of the rope made a faint sputtering noise, his hand going back to the rope.

The man moved slowly across the room, going to kneel beside Natalia. "I told you to stay outside," he hissed.

"I wanted to help you," Natalia whispered back, her lower lip trembling. Was he angry at her?

He patted her head with a gloved hand, and stood. He rested both hands on her shoulders as he faced the hanging man.

"Even the children know what you have done," the soldier said, loud enough for the hanging man to hear. "If you had treated this one with kindness, she might have saved you tonight. You, and your family."

The hanging man's face grew even darker, and his frenzied grasping at the rope started to weaken.

Natalia didn't want to be there any more. She tried to jerk out of the soldier's grasp, but he held her fast. She turned and pressed her face against his leg, but she could still hear the hanging man's movements, the sound of cloth moving against cloth, the scratching.

After a moment, after forever, the sounds stopped.

The soldier squeezed Natalia's shoulders. "Do not move," he ordered in a low, angry voice. He moved off into the room. Natalia stood frozen, too scared to turn around or to move.

There was a scraping, then a soft thud. A breath, and the candle light went out.

Before Natalia could scream in fright, the man was at her side, touching her shoulder. "It's time to leave," he said softly.

Natalia let the man guide her blindly across the room, into the kitchen. He opened the outer door and looked out, before kneeling down to Natalia's side.

"Little girl, I need to you do one more thing for me," he said.

Natalia stared at him. The moonlight glinted off his goggles.

"I need you to bolt the door from the inside, then climb back out the window again."

Natalia shook her head. She wanted to cry. The image of the hanging man was still strong in her head. "I don't want to."

The man took her arms in his hands, but he didn't shake her like she feared he might. "Little girl, please. I need you to help me on this." He pushed his goggles up onto his forehead. "Natalia, you're the only one who can complete this mission. Will you help me?"

Natalia pressed her hands against her mouth.

"Please."

After another moment, Natalia nodded. The man quickly lowered his goggles back over his eyes, and closed the door between them.

Natalia went to the shelf under the workbench and picked up the pot again. She set it on the floor by the door and stood on it to slide the bolt closed, then she carried the pot back to the shelf. She took hold of the workbench surface and, hooking her toes around the shelf, pushed herself up onto the workbench.

The man was waiting for her in the window. He lifted Natalia to the ground, then busied himself with closing the window tight, using the thin blade to re-set the window latch.

Natalia was shivering now, with cold and with fear at what she had seen inside the house. She didn't understand what she had seen; she only knew it was a very bad thing.

The man folded the knife back into his pocket, then he picked Natalia up and held her securely on his left arm. Walking calmly under the moonlight, he walked past the two sleeping dogs and out of the garden, closing the gate behind him.

The next instant, they were back in the trees. The man walked on, sure and steady, hidden in the darkness of the forest around the village, until they were climbing the mountain again.

Natalia put her arms around the man's neck and held on tight, resting her face against his cheek. He patted her back, but didn't speak.

They walked for a long time. Natalia was cold, very cold, and all she wanted was to go to sleep in her little forest house.

After walking forever, the man stopped and put Natalia down. The ground was cold under her feet. He undid his jacket, and held it out to Natalia. "Put this on," he said. His voice was small under the big sky.

Natalia let the man bundle her up in the too-large jacket, the sudden warmth overwhelming. He picked her up again, and on they went.

Eventually, they emerged into Natalia's little clearing. The man set Natalia down on the big rock while he went to fetch his canteen. He drank and drank and drank, then held the canteen to Natalia's mouth. "Have a drink, little girl," he said.

Natalia only sipped at the water. The man capped the canteen and tossed it over to the tree, then he sat beside Natalia on the rock. Only then did he remove his goggles and his face mask.

Natalia stared at him, his face barely visible in the moonlight as he looked up at the stars.

"You did a good job tonight, soldier," he said after a while. His voice sounded funny. "Such a good job."

"Is that man dead?" Natalia asked, leaning against the soldier.

He sighed. "Yes. He is."

"Why?"

"Because he was a very bad man," the soldier said. He lifted Natalia onto his lap. "He did bad things during the war, things that caused the deaths of many Soviet soldiers. Remember what I told you about the bad people?"

Natalia looked up at the night sky. Overhead, all the stars in the heavens twinkled down at her. "I remember." She blinked at the stars. She was getting sleepy again. "It was scary."

"I know," the man whispered. He moved her around on his lap so her back was pressed against his chest. "But you were so brave." He let out a breath, almost a sigh. "Natalia, can you look up at the stars for me?"

Obediently, Natalia stared up at the sky. "Do they have names?" she asked.

"Yes, they do."

"Do you know their names?"

"Yes, I do." He put one arm across Natalia's chest, holding her tight. His other hand settled on the top of Natalia's head. "Just keep looking at the stars."

Something was wrong, she could hear it in his voice. Instead of obeying his order, Natalia squirmed out from under his hands and crawled off his lap, his jacket falling to the side in the process. "What are you doing?" Natalia asked, standing on the rock.

The man just sat there. He stared down at his hands. "I'm obeying orders." His voice sounded thick, and Natalia didn't understand.

"What orders?" Natalia asked. She leaned against his shoulder.

The man cleared his throat. "My orders were to complete my mission, and not to leave anyone alive who might be aware of my presence."

"Who's that?" Natalia asked.

The man turned his head to look at Natalia. "You."

A shiver of fear slid down Natalia's back. She didn't understand. "Why?"

He shifted around on the rock so he was facing her. "Because the most important part of my mission was that the deaths in the village appear to be caused by a man who later killed himself," the soldier said. "If anyone were to suspect me, or see me in the forest, I was to kill them."

Natalia shook her head. "But I know you," she protested. "I saw you."

The man's face was shadowed. "I know."

Realization came slowly to Natalia, and when it did, she began to cry. "Are you going to kill me?" she asked, tears hot on her cheeks.

"Yes."

"I don't want you to," Natalia cried. "I thought you were my friend!"

"Natalia—"

"I helped you!" Natalia went on. "I scared off the rusalka! I found food and we shared it!"

"I know."

Natalia sniffled. She stood straight, hands clenched at her sides. "I won't tell anyone about you," she promised. "I won't say anything to anyone!"

"I have orders," the man said again, weakly. "I don't want to kill you, little girl, I need you to know that."

"So don't do it," Natalia insisted. She stepped forward. "I won't tell anyone you were ever here, I promise."

"It is not that simple," the man said. "You're just a child, you don't understand."

"I can keep my promises," Natalia said quickly. "You're my friend, and I promise I won't tell anyone about you."

The man looked up at the night sky. Overhead, a small burst of light streaked across the heavens. He let out a breath. "It's going to snow soon," he said after a minute. "It gets very cold here in the winter. It freezes early."

"I'll be warm in my tree," Natalia said. She wasn't sure why he was talking about the winter at a time like this.  
  
He looked at her. "Do you know the hardest thing about being a soldier, Natalia?" he asked. She shook her head. "It's when you have an order that you have to obey, but it's just something you can't possibly do."

Natalia stared at him, not sure what he was saying.

"Do you promise that you won't tell anyone about me?" he asked, voice suddenly urgent. "Not a single soul? Not anybody?"

"I promise," Natalia said quickly. Warmth blossomed in her chest. He really was her friend, after all! She flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug.

After a moment, he returned her hug. "You're a good girl," he said. His voice still sounded funny. "You remember that."

Natalia gave his neck a squeeze. Then she had an idea. "Can you read?" she asked, pulling back.

"Yes. Why?"

Natalia scrambled down off the rock and made her way across the dark clearing. She slithered down the stone wall and felt between the tiny cracks in the stones. Her fingers found the folded paper and she pulled it out. Holding the paper carefully, Natalia climbed the stone wall.

The man was still seated on the large rock. Natalia stopped at his feet and held up the letter. "This is from my mama," she said, pressing against his leg. "Can you read it?"

The man took the paper, and unfolded it. He picked up his goggles and held them to his eyes.

He looked at the paper for a very long time.

Maybe it took him a long time to read, Natalia thought, but then he lowered his goggles and looked at Natalia.

"What does it say?" Natalia asked hopefully.

The man cleared his throat. "Your mama had to go away on an adventure," he said after a minute. "She'll come find you one day."

Natalia perked up. Mama was going to come find her! "Why did she take Petrov?" Natalia asked.

"Well," the man said as he folded the paper up. "She needed someone to carry her bag."

That made sense. Petrov was strong, even if he was a bully. "Why did mama take Ana?"

"That's the baby?" the man asked. Natalia nodded. "Babies need their mothers, you know that."

"When is mama going to come get me?" Natalia asked. "Will she know where to find me? I walked a long way from home."

The man put his hand on Natalia's head. "She'll know where to find you," he promised. His voice was rough. "Now, you promised me that you won't tell anyone that I was here."

"I won't." Natalia declared. She pushed the folded paper into her dress pocket, happy knowing that her mama would come find her one day. After all, the soldier had told her so, and he was her friend.

"Then I have to leave."

Natalia went still. "Why?"

"Because soldiers have to report back to base after a mission," the man explained. He slid off the rock to kneel beside Natalia. "I have to go, now."

Natalia stared at him. "Why?" she asked, sadness growing in her head. "I want you to stay."

He touched the tip of her nose. "Soldiers don't always get to do what they want."

Natalia let her head drop. It was cold and she was sad and confused and so, so exhausted. "But I want you to stay," she said again.

"Come on," the man said. He wrapped Natalia in his jacket again, and picked her up. "It's time for all the little soldier girls to go to sleep."

"I'm not going to sleep," Natalia objected. The general effect was rather spoiled, however, as she yawned so wide. "I'm not."

"Of course not," the man murmured. "Shh."

"I'm not." The warmth of the man's jacket was seeping into her bones. She yawned again, and gripped the man's collar. "You're my friend."

"Do you know something? I've never had a friend before," the man said, his voice soft.

"You can be my friend," Natalia declared. Her eyes were closing in spite of themselves. "Friends don't hurt friends."

As Natalia slipped into darkness, the last thing she heard the man say was, "Good night, little Natalia. And good luck."

Then sleep took her.


	4. Chapter 4

**A Handful of Days**

Natalia woke the next morning to the sounds of birdsong.

She opened her eyes and sat up. She was lying on the big rock in the centre of the clearing, with the first hints of sunlight peeking through the trees. No wonder she was cold.

As Natalia looked around, the memories of the previous night came back to her; of the house in the darkened village, of the man dangling from the rope, of the bloodied knife.

She remembered what the soldier had said to her; that he had orders to kill her. Only he had not done so.

Where was he now?

Natalia slid off the rock in a sudden panic. The lean-to against the tree was gone. The fire pit, where they had built a fire and the man had made soup, was also gone, the only hint of it a small depression in the dirt.

"Where are you?" Natalia called out, running around the big tree. "Where did you go?"

There was no sign of the man. There was no sign anyone had ever been in the clearing.

The soldier said he had to leave, but Natalia hadn't wanted home to go; only he had. Natalia was alone.

Natalia walked around her clearing once more, looking for any sign of the soldier. A few branches lay under the stone overhang, the remnants of the woodpile. A small pile of stones, scorched black from the fire, lay piled at the base of one of the trees. Everything else was gone.

Natalia sat down on the grass and pulled her sweater close around her. There was a heavy ache in her belly and her throat hurt. She was all alone.

She sat there for a long time, long enough for the sun to rise high in the sky, the warmth of the sun peeking through the leaves. Finally, she stood up and rubbed her eyes. If she was alone, there was no changing that now. Natalia had been alone before.

Slowly, she dragged herself down the path to the river. The sunlight glinted off the burbling water, but Natalia was not cheered. She waded into the water and stared down at her toes, pale underneath the water's surface. She didn't dare go in any farther, as the rusalka might still be angry about Natalia's previous escape.

But, then again, if the rusalka grabbed her and took her away, maybe Natalia would be able to see Ivan again.

A silver fish darted around Natalia's feet, breaking her concentration. The fish quickly vanished upstream, and in spite of her aching throat, Natalia smiled at the silly fish.

Natalia bunched up her skirt so it wouldn't get wet and bent over to scoop up handfuls of cool, clean water from the river. As she drank, the pain in her throat eased.

As Natalia waded back to the bank, she wondered what the soldier was doing at that very moment. Was he sleeping somewhere? Maybe he was walking in the forest, or along a road. Natalia looked up to the mountain peak, far off in the distance. Maybe he was high on the mountain, high as a bird.

She missed the soldier terribly. She hoped he was all right, and that he was able to find enough food on his own.

Natalia walked back to her clearing. The walk to the river had cleared her head and she was starting to warm up. What should she do now? She had drunk water, and now she should find food, Natalia decided. She might be alone, but she had been alone before. She knew what she had to do.

Only now, Natalia had no pail. She had left the pail at Baba Yaga's house the day before, when the man had pulled her out of the house.

Natalia put her thumb in her mouth, uncertain. She had promised the soldier that she wouldn't go to Baba Yaga's house until the morning. It was morning now. But what if Baba Yaga was angry with Natalia? What if she didn't speak to Natalia any more?

In her heart, Natalia didn't believe what the man had said about Baba Yaga being dead. Baba Yaga was a witch, and witches did things differently than people.

Natalia pulled her thumb out of her mouth and stared up at the darkest place on the mountain. Maybe she could go to Baba Yaga, and apologize for the soldier's bad behaviour. Maybe Baba Yaga would forgive her. After all, the soldier was a grown-up; grown-ups didn't know anything about witches and spirits.

Natalia took a deep breath, and off to Baba Yaga's house she went.

She walked up the hill, through the dark places in the forest to the rocky slope. The path over the rocks felt sharp under her feet today. Natalia hoped that didn't mean that Baba Yaga was angry with her.

As Natalia approached Baba Yaga's house, the thick tall trees loomed menacingly. Natalia hunched her shoulders and inched forward. She didn't want Baba Yaga angry at her.

When Natalia rounded the corner of the hut, the wooden door was wide open. Natalia peeked around the door into the hut.

Baba Yaga was gone.

Too startled to be scared, Natalia ran into the hut and looked all around. The old woman was nowhere to be seen! She wasn't in her chair, or lying in the bed. Natalia even looked into the tiny stove, remembering a story she'd heard when she was just a little girl. Baba Yaga wasn't _anywhere_.

Natalia walked out of the hut and looked around at the trees. There was no movement in the silent forest. The only thing that was different was the pile of recently disturbed dirt, a short distance from the hut.

Natalia went over to investigate. It was as if someone had dug a hole, and then filled it in badly. Natalia frowned at the dirt pile. Why would Baba Yaga dig a hole in the ground?

Some small memory tickled in Natalia's head. Once, a very long time ago, Natalia had been helping mama in the garden and mama had dug up a spoon from under the dirt. Natalia had thought this strange, as she was pretty sure that spoons did not grow under ground, but mama said that sometimes people buried their valuables underground when the armies were coming, or when they had to go away from home.

Natalia crouched by the edge of the dirt pile. It was nearly as long as Natalia was tall, and wide. Someone had patted the earth down, leaving prints in the dirt. Natalia put her hand into one of the handprints, and it was large; a big person had made those handprints.

Standing, Natalia let out a sigh. Not only had her soldier gone away, but Baba Yaga had gone away as well, after burying her valuables in the ground.

Now Natalia was all alone in the forest.

Natalia dragged herself back to the cottage. She sat in Baba Yaga's chair and stared out the open door at the forest.

The ache in her tummy was back and she wanted to cry. But Natalia held in her tears. Even if the man had gone away, Natalia was still a soldier, and soldiers didn't cry.

Instead, she slipped off the chair. Sitting around feeling sad wasn't going to put food in her belly.

She rounded the table to pick up the pail from where she had left it the previous day. She lifted it carefully, expecting it to be full of water, but it shifted oddly in her hands, and whatever was in the pail made a strange metal _thunk_.

Frowning, Natalia looked into the pail. There was no water, but there was something in there.

Carrying her prize outside into the daylight, Natalia sat on the grass to examine the pail's contents. First, she pulled out a small square, covered in a silver paper. She unwrapped the paper to find a small brown square. Wrinkling her nose, Natalia sniffed the square, then carefully touched her tongue to the square's edge. The sweet battled with the bitter, but she knew what it was. It was chocolate!

Natalia nibbled at the square's edge, just enough to let the bittersweet cover her tongue. She closed her eyes for a moment to savour the taste, then she wrapped up her prize and placed it on the ground.

The next item in the pail was the soldier's thin folded knife. Natalia opened up the blade and looked at it for a while in the sunlight; silver and sharp. Natalia touched the tip of the blade gently, before folding it again and placing it on the ground beside the chocolate.

Lastly, at the very bottom of the pail, was mama's paper note. Natalia unfolded the paper and looked once again at the words. She knew some of her letters, and she said those letters out loud as she traced the words on the page. Maybe one day, she would learn how to read, and she would read all of mama's words. One day, if mama didn't come back to find Natalia first.

She put the folded paper into her dress pocket, alongside the folded knife and the chocolate. The knife made the pocket hang funny, but the weight made her feel secure. She had a knife now, like a real soldier.

Picking up the pail, Natalia looked at Baba Yaga's empty house one last time. She didn't think she would come back here again, not that Baba Yaga was gone. Natalia would have to find food on her own. Natalia was alone, and she had only herself to depend upon.

Turning, Natalia walked past the dirt pile, through the trees and down the slope, away from Baba Yaga's house.

* * *

The next few days were flat and hungry.

Natalia ranged farther and farther on the mountainside to look for food. It was late in the season and nearly all the berries were gone. Natalia drank a lot of water to keep from feeling too hungry, and she tried to make the chocolate last, but one day, a handful of days after the soldier had gone, Natalia sat in the clearing and stared up at the sky, her head feeling fuzzy. She was so hungry, it was as if a wolf was tearing at her insides.

She could try to cross the river again. The rusalka might come after her again, but Natalia would have to take that risk if she wanted to eat.

After a few minutes, Natalia gathered the energy to stand. As she straightened up, a wave of grey washed over her and she fell to her knees. When the grey cleared, Natalia tried to stand again, this time successfully. She made herself hold her head high. No soldier would be weak. A soldier should be strong. Natalia would be strong. She'd go as far as she had to, to find food.

Natalia retrieved her pail and made sure she had the soldier's knife in her pocket before heading down the path to the rusalka's river. First, she would get a drink of water, then she would find the place she crossed the river before. Hopefully the rusalka would be somewhere else.

The walk to the river took even longer than usual. Natalia tried to keep walking, but she was just so tired and hungry. But she had to keep going. There was no one else to help her. She had to do it all herself.

Eventually, Natalia made it to the riverbank. She waded out into the water to get the freshest water to drink. The water was cold, and as Natalia drank handful after handful, some of the haze lifted from her head.

Licking her lips, Natalia climbed back onto the riverbank and headed in the direction of the river crossing. Fallen leaves lay on the ground, dry and crackling under Natalia's bare feet. Natalia hummed a little song as she walked, the bubbling river on one side and the forest on the other, with the sounds of the birds in the trees and the occasional yip of the foxes.

In between one heartbeat and the next, the forest went still.

Natalia froze. Something was _wrong_ in the forest.

She spun around, looking and listening as hard as she could. The trees and the river were the same as always, but out of the corner of her eye, Natalia saw a flash of black. Turning, Natalia saw what it was, and her blood ran cold.

Soldiers.

Soldiers in the forest.

Natalia gripped the handle of the pail so tightly that pain shot up her arm. The soldier in the lead, a tall big man with light hair, lifted his arm and gave a shout, and the soldiers behind him fanned out across the slope.

Each and every one of them was looking straight at Natalia.

The tall blond man called out, "Stop!"

That one word broke through the icy fear in Natalia's mind, and she sprinted up the hill, away from the soldiers. The man gave a great shout, and Natalia could hear the crash and clatter of many men chasing her.

Natalia didn't know why there were soldiers in the forest, nor why they were chasing her, but all of mama's frantic warnings came back to her, of men come to take them away in the night. All she could think about was to escape.

She knew this forest better than anyone, had spent months here, exploring and searching for food, and she knew exactly where to go. As the clatter and crash of the soldiers grew nearer, Natalia dove under a fallen log, shimmying on her belly in the tight space. One of the men yelled at her to stop, but Natalia was having none of that.

In the scramble out from under the tree, Natalia's pail got wedged between the tree trunk and a rock. Making a split-second decision, Natalia abandoned the pail and kept running.

A flash of black out of the corner of her eye, and Natalia only barely ducked to the side to avoid the reaching hands. A voice cursed at her, but Natalia slid down a dirt embankment and was running before the man could make it down the hill.

She was near the thicker part of the forest now. If she could just make it through the tree and up the hill, she would be near the place where the bears lived, with the old trees and hidey holes she could use to stay away from the soldiers.

Ducking behind a tree, Natalia paused to look back at her pursuers. She could see flashes of black fabric and movements in the trees; they were still coming after her.

Natalia had moved past fear; now she was _angry_. How dare these soldiers come to her forest and crash around and chase her? Fire burning in her belly, Natalia pulled the small knife out of her pocket and opened up the blade. She was a soldier herself, and she was going to fight any other soldier who tried to take her away.

"There you are!" came a gruff male voice from behind Natalia, and hands clamped down on Natalia's shoulders. She screamed and swung around, the knife gripped firmly in her hand. The shudder of the knife's impact went up Natalia's arm and shoulder, as the soldier let Natalia go with a scream of his own. Natalia backed away, the knife in her hand dripping blood as the man staggered against the tree holding his shoulder.

Natalia turned and ran away, as fast as she could go. Behind her, the shouts and yells grew more frenzied, but she couldn't think about that, she just had to run as fast and as far as she could.

Her lungs burned and her legs hurt; she was so tired, but Natalia knew now she could never stop running.

Her foot caught on a tree root and she stumbled, nearly slicing up her own face as she fell. She was back on her feet in a moment, but that was all the soldiers needed. Two of them caught her, one grabbing her hand with the knife, while the other picked her up around the middle. Natalia fought, kicking and punching, trying to stab the soldiers with her sharp little knife. More soldiers joined the two in the space between the trees. It took two of them to hold Natalia's hand still and pry the knife from her fingers, while another held Natalia's feet so she couldn't kick any more.

The blond soldier man came over, staring at Natalia with anger on his face. "How many men does it take to catch one troublesome child?" he demanded of the soldiers. He caught Natalia's chin in his hand, and when Natalia tried to bite him, he slapped her so hard her vision went white.

"She stabbed Grekov," another of the men said. "He's losing a lot of blood."

The blond soldier made a disgusted noise. "She's a little animal," he said. "This whole journey is a waste of time. Bring her."

They tried to make Natalia walk, but as soon as her feet touched the ground she tried to run away again. No matter how much they hit her and beat her, she was not going to go with them!

After the third attempt, the blond man ordered Natalia's feet to be tied and her arms bound against her body. All the squirming and struggling in the world didn't help, as the tall men were so much stronger than she was. One of the men tied her feet together with twine, while another took his belt and wrapped it tight around Natalia's torso, trapping her arms at her sides. She tried one last time to escape, by rolling away down the hill, but one man picked up Natalia and tossed her roughly over his shoulder. Even as she tried to struggle, there was no escape.

"Back to the site," the soldier said, and off the soldiers went. Natalia couldn't see anything except the back of the man's jacket. His shoulder dug sharp against her belly, her ankles tied painfully with the twine.

Blood rushed to Natalia's head as she dangled over the soldier's shoulder. It made her feel weird, like she was going to vomit, but nothing came out of her mouth.

Now, in the aftermath of the chase, Natalia's anger was gone, replaced by cold fear. Who were these soldiers? What did they want? They were dressed in black, like her own soldier, but they were so very different. They were mean and ugly and Natalia hated them for coming into her forest and chasing her and hurting her. If she got her knife back, she was going to stab them all!

One of the men said something to another, but the blond man's voice cut across the group. "No talking! You have orders!"

Natalia tried to lift her head to look around. She could see the ground, the boots of the soldiers. She tried lifting her head even more, and she could see one of the soldier's belt. He had a pistol holstered on his hip, just like her soldier had.

Natalia bit her lip so she wouldn't cry. Had she done something wrong? Maybe her soldier didn't believe she could keep him a secret. Maybe he thought she had been bad, and had sent these soldiers to kill her to keep her quiet.

Tears welled up in Natalia's eyes. If only she could talk to her soldier! She could tell him that she didn't tell anyone about him in the forest, or in the house with the hanging man!

After an eternity of bouncing along on the man's shoulder, the group stopped and hands lifted Natalia roughly to the ground. She saw at once that they were in her clearing, only there were _more_ men there, men in uniforms and men in long coats and they were everywhere, looking in her little forest house and at the rock and at the pile of stones by the tree. As Natalia watched, one man kicked the pile of pebbles, scattering them across the grass.

"Stop it!" Natalia shouted, and all of a sudden the attention of everyone in the clearing was on her. She flinched back, and the sudden motion made her lose her balance. Unable to move her feet or her hands to stop her fall, Natalia toppled over onto the grass.

"Why is she bound?" asked one of the men in a long coat. He didn't look like a soldier; he had on a strange furry hat. Natalia rolled around so she could sit up, struggling the whole time.

"She stabbed Private Grekov," the blond soldier said. "Every time we put her down, she tried to run away. She's an animal."

"Well," said the man in the hat. He pulled off his black gloves as he walked over to Natalia. Crouching down in front of Natalia, he asked, "Are you an animal?"

"No!" Natalia exclaimed. She glared at the man in the hat. "They chased me first!"

"Yes, I expect that they did." The man in the hat stood. "With what did she stab Grekov?" The blond soldier handed the bloody knife to the man. The man held it up to examine. "Standard Department X issue," he murmured. "Child, where did you get this knife?"

Natalia bit her lower lip. She would not answer, she _could_ _not answer_. She had told her soldier that she would never tell anyone he was in the woods!

At Natalia's silence, the man in the hat knelt once more. He held up the knife and Natalia cringed back in fear; what was he going to do to her?

"Hold still," he said, taking her feet in his hand.

Natalia braced herself for the punishment, but the man only used the blood-stained blade to slice through the twine around her ankles. He put the knife on the ground, and lifted Natalia to her feet to undo the belt around her torso. Once her arms were free, Natalia shook her hands to get some feeling back into them.

"Now," the man said. "These men say that you are an animal; I think that you might be a little girl. What do you think?"

Natalia looked around. There were men all around, in every direction. If she tried to run away again, they would catch her again. She rubbed her cheek defiantly. "I'm a girl," she declared.

"That's what I thought." The man in the hat looked her straight in the eye. "What is your name, child?"

Natalia drew a deep breath. "Natalia Alianovna Romanova," she said, saying the words clearly. "That is my name."

"Ah." The man in the hat stood up. "Young Miss Romanova, I will ask you again. How did you get this knife?"

Natalia put her hands behind her back and closed her mouth firmly. She was not going to say a single word!

One of the men in the group muttered something about an imbecile of a child, and the man in the hat sighed. "Child, what were you doing in the woods today?"

Seeing no harm in answering that question, Natalia said, "I was going to find food. I took a drink at the river and went walking to the place in the river where you can cross where it is only up to here," and she held her hand to her throat.

"What sort of food would you look for?" the man asked.

"Berries and nuts," Natalia told him. "Maybe mushrooms if I could find any."

One of the soldier men came over to the man in the hat, and handed him something. Natalia's eyes went wide at the sight. The man had mama's letter!

"That's mine!" Natalia exclaimed, dashing towards the man in the hat. She jumped at him, trying to grab the letter from his hand. "That is my letter!"

The man held the paper out of Natalia's reach. "Child, stop this behaviour," he ordered. He put the folded paper into his pocket. "You are acting in an uncivilized manner!"

Natalia didn't know what uncivilized meant, but it sounded bad. She stopped jumping and held onto the man's sleeve. "May I _please_ have my paper back?" she said, trying to use all the polite words she had learned from mama. "It is my paper."

"Can you read?" the man asked.

Natalia shook her head. "I can read some letters," she said. "One day, I will be able to read all the words."

"Until that day, I will keep the paper safe for you." The man in the hat untangled Natalia's hands from the fabric of his coat. "Now, I want you to sit here with this soldier. If you sit quietly, we will give you some food."

A soldier, not one of the ones who had chased Natalia, came over to the big rock in the centre of the clearing. To Natalia's astonishment, the soldier was a woman! She helped Natalia climb onto the rock and sit down.

"Give her some dried meat," the man in the hat said to the woman soldier. "Not too much, her body is probably close to starvation mode."

"Understood, doctor," the woman soldier said. Natalia sat very still as the woman opened up a bag, and removed a small paper-wrapped bundle. Inside the bundle were small strips of dried meat. The woman handed one strip to Natalia. "Chew slowly," the woman said sternly.

Natalia nodded, and took a bite of the dried meat. It was salty and tough, but Natalia chewed and chewed and finally swallowed, and her tummy started to feel a bit better.

As she chewed, she watched the men in her clearing. The soldiers stood around aimlessly, while the man in the hat stood talking with another man in a long coat. Their backs were to Natalia, but she could still hear their voices.

"I disagree with this decision," the other man was saying. "Bringing a subject like this into the program; you have no idea of her breeding or genetics—"

"You spend too much time thinking that breeding will find us the perfect specimen," the man in the hat snapped. "Accidental genetic success can be found in the population, often with more success than any breeding program."

"You mean here?" The other man gestured around the clearing as Natalia took another bite of dried meat. "A peasant child lost in the woods?"

"A peasant child who has survived in the forest, alone, for months," said the man in the hat. "You heard the Winter Soldier's interrogation. He believes the child to be of above-average intelligence and resourcefulness—"

"The Winter Soldier is nothing more than a weapon," the other man scoffed. "What could he know about viable subjects for the program?"

The man in the hat shook his head. "We will take her back to the compound for full testing," he said, and his words sounded final. "If she does not pass the tests, she can be disposed of at that point."

Natalia hunched in on herself as the man in the hat walked over to the rock. She wasn't sure what it meant to be disposed of, but she didn't think it would be nice.

The man in the hat looked down at Natalia. "Miss Romanova, you will come with us."

Natalia stood up on the rock. "No, thank you," she said politely. "I will stay here. You go away now."

The corner of the man's mouth twitched. "I was told that you think you're a soldier. Do you want to be a real soldier, little girl?"

Natalia didn't know what to say.

"I will make you a deal," said the man in the hat. "If you come with us, without causing a fuss, we will teach you to be a real soldier one day."

Natalia looked down at the strip of dried meat in her hands. It was getting colder in the woods at night, and there was no food left to find. If she went with the soldiers, she probably would not have to spend all day looking for food. Maybe she wouldn't be so cold all the time.

Part of her wanted to say yes, and to go be a soldier, but something in the man's eyes, in the way he looked at Natalia, made her stomach cramp up. Something was wrong with that man.

 "I want to be a soldier," she said quietly.

Across the clearing, one of the soldiers said something rude. The man in the hat turned around slowly to look at that man. "I was told you were the best the Red Army had to offer to the Department. And you were outwitted by a starving girl-child with a pocket knife." He picked up the small knife from the ground. "It took six of you to bring her in, and she still drew the most blood. If I were in your shoes, I would find that… humiliating."

The soldier flushed red, but the blond soldier stepped between the two men. "Go help Grekov wash up," the blond soldier said.

The angry soldier hauled the still-bleeding soldier up, and down the river path they went. The man in the hat turned back to Natalia. "Now, will you come with us without causing a fuss?"

Natalia looked up at the mountain, around the clearing, at her little forest house. A lump settled in her throat. She didn't want to leave the forest. She liked it here, even if she was alone.

And alone she was; her soldier had left the forest, as had Baba Yaga. Even mama might not be able to find Natalia hiding up here in the forest.

"Come along, child," said the man in the hat. He lifted Natalia down off the rock. "We have a walk to the car and these antics have been quite delaying."

Natalia took a few steps, then stopped. She looked around the clearing for the last time. It had been her home for so long, all through the wonderful summer in the forest. She would never forget this place, and she would return if she could.

"Come along," repeated the man, and off the group went, Natalia and the man in the hat and the woman soldier and all the other men. They walked across the forest down the slope. They had only been walking for a few minutes when the blond soldier held up a small black box, which had started sputtering. The man spoke into the box and the box spoke back at him.

"What is it?" the other man in the coat demanded.

"Sergeant Krupin fell in the river and hasn't resurfaced!" the soldier exclaimed. Around him, the other soldiers looked alarmed. "Grekov is requesting assistance!"

The man in the hat shook his head. "Go," he said dismissively, and three of the soldiers ran back in the direction of the river. "I thought you told me that this strike team was the best you had," he said to the other man.

"They are," the other man said stiffly.

Natalia wondered if she should tell the men about the rusalka, in case more soldiers went in the river. No, she decided after a moment's thought. The men would probably be as angry at Natalia as her soldier had been, and after all, if the rusalka really had dragged a soldier under the river, she was probably not hungry for another one quite yet.

"Excuse me," Natalia said instead. The man in the hat looked down at her. "Are you a general?" She didn't know much about the people in charge of soldiers; Petrov had once mentioned generals and commanders when he was playing army.

"No," the man in the hat said. "I am not a soldier. I am a doctor. You can call me Doctor Sokolov."

"Doctor Sokolov," Natalia repeated. "A doctor came to the house once." It had been in the winter, before Ana was born. Natalia hadn't liked the man's voice and hid behind the stove until he was gone.

"Have you ever been sick?" asked the doctor in the hat.

"No." Natalia climbed over a rock while the others walked around it. "I had a cut on my arm once. See?" She pushed her sweater sleeve up as far as it would go, to show the doctor the scar on the inside of her upper arm.

"How did you get cut there?" he asked, pausing to examine the scar.

"I fell on the scythe in the barn," Natalia said. "It hurt a lot but that was when I was just a little girl."

"Did you get blood poisoning?" the doctor asked as they resumed their walk.

"I don't think so." Papa had scooped Natalia up and run with her into the house and the old woman from next door sewed up Natalia's arm with her needle and thread and put a poultice on her arm and made her drink soup. She didn't think she had been poisoned.

"A healthy immune response," the doctor said, looking at the other man. The other man shook his head.

"We will see what the testing reveals," was all he said.

They walked on some more. Natalia hadn't been in this part of the forest for a long time. They were still walking down a slope, and at this rate they would be in the valley soon.

"Where are we going?" Natalia asked, hurrying to keep up with the men. Their legs were long and hers were short, and she was dreadfully tired, but she didn't want one of them to tie her up and carry her on his shoulder again.

"We are going to the automobiles," the doctor said.

"Are we going to drive?" Natalia asked, perking up. At least she wouldn't have to walk forever.

"Of course we are. Haven't you ever driven in an automobile before?"

"The farm had trucks," Natalia explained. "The men used the trucks to take the milk to market. We weren't supposed to ride on the trucks, but the boys did anyway."

Natalia did not volunteer that she had also hitched rides on the back of the trucks with the boys; Petrov hated that Natalia did that, and tried to push her off, but Natalia was faster than Petrov even when she was little.

After the chase and the long walk, Natalia was thirsty. She didn't want to ask the men for water, but she needed to drink. After a few more minutes, she could hear the river rushing up ahead.

Taking her chance, Natalia dashed over to the doctor's side to tug on his coat sleeve. "Can I get a drink of water?" she asked.

The doctor stopped walking. "Only if you promise that you will not run away," he said, staring down at her. "If you run away, the soldiers will chase you and catch you again."

"I won't run," Natalia said. She didn't like being chased by big men; they were scary and mean. She turned and ran towards the river, coming out onto the flat riverbank. She knelt and drank handfuls of water, grimacing a little at the flat, muddy taste from the water. But there was no place for Natalia to wade into the river to get fresh water; the river here moved fast and angry.

She stood, trying to swallow away the dirty taste on her tongue, when something upriver caught her eye. She stared as the black thing drifted towards her, bashing into rocks as it went.

As Natalia watched, the black thing drifted past a log and got itself snagged on an underwater branch. The thing turned in the river current, and Natalia could now see that the paleness amid all the black was a face with a mouth and with eyes, and those eyes stared right at Natalia.

Natalia didn't like the face. She took a step back from the riverbank, but the underwater face didn't follow her, didn't even move. As Natalia stared at the open underwater eyes, she recognized the face from one of the soldiers who went down to the river.

This must be the man the rusalka took, Natalia thought. The rusalka must not have liked him at all, to let him go so quickly.

"Child, what is taking you so long?" the woman soldier asked, coming up behind Natalia on the riverbank. "We need to get moving."

Natalia pointed at the face underwater. "He's there," she told the woman.

The next few minutes were very crowded. The woman soldier gave a shout and a bunch of soldiers rushed to the riverbank, pushing Natalia this way and that. Someone picked Natalia up and carried her back up to solid ground while the soldiers tried to get their comrade out of the river.

Natalia put her thumb in her mouth and sucked on it while the soldiers hauled the man out of the water and then tried to get their comrade to breathe again. After a few minutes of watching, Natalia realized that it was the doctor who had lifted her away, and was still holding her on his arm.

She left her thumb in her mouth as she watched the soldiers. One of them was nearly crying, and all of them looked sad.

"Miss Romanova, do you know what happened to the sergeant?" the doctor asked.

Natalia chewed at her thumb for a moment, then pulled her hand away from her mouth. "I think so," she whispered, in case the soldiers would hear and be angry with her.

The doctor looked at Natalia with understanding eyes. "Can you tell me?"

Natalia nodded. "The rusalka took him because she was hungry," Natalia whispered into the man's ear.

The man considered this. "If you are right," he said after a minute, "We should keep this between ourselves. So no one else becomes frightened."

Natalia leaned against the man's shoulder. "I will do that," she promised. She remembered how very angry her soldier had been when she talked about the rusalka; maybe all soldiers were like that.

The other man in the coat came over to them. "This delays us," he said to the doctor. "You take the girl and the matron with an escort; the rest of us will return with the body and the other soldiers."

"As you wish," the doctor said. He turned down the hill, still carrying Natalia on his arm. The woman soldier and another soldier soon caught up to them as they descended into the valley.

Natalia thought about telling the doctor that she could walk, but it was nice to not have to run to keep up with the adults. She liked being this high, able to see over the tops of the tall grasses. When she was grown, she would be tall and able to see where she as going, all by herself.

Once in the valley, the doctor walked across the meadow to a pile of large rocks. Behind the rocks were parked two vehicles, one car and one truck. Beside the car, the doctor set Natalia on the ground. "Go fetch a traveling rug from the truck," he said to the woman soldier. "We will wrap the child in it so she does not get the vehicle too dirty." He turned to the man soldier. "Radio back to the compound and inform them of our situation."

Once the others had walked away, the man picked up Natalia and set her on the hood of the car. He looked at her, and she looked at him.

In this light, it was almost as if his blue eyes were glowing gold. But that was impossible.

"Now, child, we can speak freely," he said. "I know what you are not saying, about the soldier who was here with you in the forest."

Natalia grabbed handfuls of her skirt and hunched over. She wasn't going to tell the doctor anything about her soldier!

"He told us about you, did you know that?" the doctor asked. Natalia's head shot up. "About a little girl who had seen everything he did, about all aspects of his mission."

Natalia shook her head, her tummy hurting. Why would he tell about that?

"He disobeyed orders to keep you alive," the doctor went on. "Do you know how wrong that is? When a soldier disobeys an order like that? By all rights, we could have had him executed for his treason. "

Natalia felt as if she was going to be sick. Not her soldier!

"He didn't want to tell us about you," the doctor said. "In fact, he held his tongue through two interrogations. It took a great deal of… persuasion, for us to convince him to speak the truth. But tell us, he did." The doctor leaned down, his face close to Natalia's. "He told us about a little girl in the woods, a little girl who fancied herself a soldier. That little girl is you, Natalia."

"No," Natalia cried, tears pressing hot in her eyes.

"Yes," the doctor said. He stood up again. "The soldier was punished, of course, but not nearly as harshly as he could have been. And this is where you come in."

Natalia sniffled hard to keep from crying.

"His punishment for disobeying his orders was to have his memories of this mission taken away," the doctor said. "He will not remember you, nor how he disobeyed orders. To him, he has never met you."

"Why not?" Natalia asked, not understanding what the man meant. How could someone not remember something that had happened?

"That is no concern of yours," the doctor said. "What does concern you is what happens next. You are never to speak of the soldier to anyone. Not to any soldiers you meet, not to me, not even to yourself, do you understand?"

"Why?"

The doctor pursed his lips. "Because if you do, and his treason is revealed, he will be executed. You don't want that, do you?"

Natalia pressed her hands to her mouth and shook her head, hard. Not her soldier!

"Understand me, child," the doctor said. "If you tell anyone that you met the soldier in the woods; he will be killed, and it will be all your fault."

"No," Natalia cried, hot tears running down her cheeks. She didn't want the soldier to die because of her!

"Then you know what you have to do," the doctor said. "You don't speak of him to anyone. And if you ever see him again?" The doctor's face was as cold as stone. "You can never tell him that you have met him before."

Natalia twisted her hands up in the collar of her dress. "Won't he know me?" she asked.

"No, he will not." The doctor stared at Natalia. "Do you understand, Natalia?"

Natalia nodded hard. She didn't understand how her soldier wouldn't know her, not after everything that had happened, but she didn't want him to die!

"Good." The doctor patted Natalia's head, but she twisted away from him. "Now stop crying and wipe your eyes."

Natalia sniffled as the woman soldier came back over to the car. "Is she all right?" the woman asked.

"Children cry," the doctor said dismissively. "Get her into the car, we need to get moving."

Natalia glared at the doctor. For a few minutes, she had thought he might be a nice man, but he wasn't! He was a bad man!

"Come along," the woman said to Natalia, lifting her off the car's hood. "We need to get you strapped in for the ride."

The woman spread a blanket out in the car's back seat and helped Natalia climb onto it. The woman then wrapped the edges of the blanket around Natalia so Natalia was nice and warm. The woman sat on the seat next to Natalia and closed the door behind them.

Natalia looked around the car with interest, sniffling only a little. The interior was black and shiny, nothing like the old battered trucks that she had seen in her village. Wrapped up in the scratchy blanket, Natalia was warm.

The doctor and the man soldier climbed into the car's front seat and they were off in a rumble of the engine. Natalia craned her neck to look out of the side window, at the valley moving rapidly past them.

After a little while, the car turned onto a real road and the ride smoothed out. They passed trees and hills and in no time at all, they were driving through the village. Here, the car slowed as they maneuvered around people walking on the road.

Natalia looked at the people, wondering who they were and what they did in the village, and if they knew that the bad man in the house was dead.

The driver honked the horn as an old horse team slowly pulled a wagon across the road. Natalia untangled herself from the blankets and climbed to her knees to look out the side window.

Finally, the car could drive around the horse team, and the driver sped down the road. There were still a few people walking on the side of the road, but one in particular caught Natalia's attention. As they drove past, Natalia looked at the old woman, walking slowly at the side of the road, and she gasped.

_It was Baba Yaga._

The old woman wore a shapeless grey dress, just like Baba Yaga's, and had a faded blue kerchief on her head, just like Baba Yaga!

Natalia pressed her nose and hands against the window, unable to breathe. It was Baba Yaga! The soldier had been wrong, Baba Yaga wasn't a dead person!

The old woman saw Natalia in the car window and lifted her hand in a wave. Open-mouthed, Natalia waved back at the old woman, until the car turned a corner and the old woman was out of sight.

"Why were you waving at that woman?" the woman soldier asked, pulling Natalia back onto the seat and tucking her tight into the blanket.

"She waved at me," Natalia whispered, staring out the car window. High above them, the trees on the hills whipped past as the car carried Natalia away from her forest.

She had said goodbye to Baba Yaga.

Natalia knew now she would never again see her little home in the green forest on the mountain.

_To be continued_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a reminder, Doctor Sokolov is the Goa'uld Isis (as we found out in [Widow Maker](http://archiveofourown.org/works/886492/chapters/1877326))


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

**And All The Days After That**

When the car finally stopped, it was night, and they were inside a stone compound. The woman carried Natalia, blanket and all, into one of the buildings. The walls of the building were grey, lit by harsh overhead lights.

"Clean her up and get her to eat something," the doctor said, unbuttoning his long coat. "I want a full medical examination before she goes to bed. Testing can begin tomorrow."

"Yes, Doctor Sokolov," the woman said. She carried Natalia down a hallway and through a doorway. The metal door closing behind them was the loudest sound Natalia had ever heard.

"Where are we going?" Natalia asked from the depths of the blanket.

"The baths," the woman told her. Another woman joined them, an old woman with grey hair and a creased face. She frowned at Natalia as the first woman unwrapped Natalia from the blanket and set her on the cold tile floor.

"Not much to look at," the old woman said. "Come on, let me see you."

The younger woman left the tiled room, and the older woman helped Natalia take off her sweater and her dress. The old woman examined Natalia closely, lifting her arms and looking in her mouth with a little light, then she undid Natalia's braids and looked closely at her hair with the same little light.

"No vermin," the old woman said. "At least that is something. Come along, time for your bath."

The woman guided Natalia by the hand into another room with a tile floor. In that room was a bathtub, already full. The woman lifted Natalia into the lukewarm water and proceeded to scrub Natalia all over with soap. A few times, the woman scrubbed Natalia's skin so rough it hurt, but Natalia didn't cry out; she wasn't a baby.

When the water was cold and dirty, the woman drained the bathtub and refilled it with clean warm water. She washed Natalia's hair with harsh soap that stung Natalia's eyes; but then she helped Natalia wash her eyes with clean water so Natalia's eyes didn't sting for long.

After all that, the woman wrapped Natalia in a big towel and carried her into yet another room. "How many rooms are there?" Natalia asked as the old woman set Natalia on a bench.

"This is a large facility," the old woman said. "Put on these clothes."

Natalia stepped into the underwear and the trousers the woman gave her. The trousers were too big at the waist and too long in the leg, but the woman tightened the strings at the waist and rolled up the pant legs.

Next came an undershirt that billowed around Natalia, and finally a pullover sweater. Natalia was instantly warm, and she flapped her hands to see the sleeves of her new outfit move.

"How long has it been since you wore shoes?" the old woman asked, making Natalia sit on the bench. She took Natalia's foot in her hand and set about clipping Natalia's toenails with a little metal clipper.

"A long time," Natalia said. "Maybe since winter."

The woman did not respond, only clipped the toenails on Natalia's other foot. When she was done, she instructed Natalia to pull on a pair of socks, and then helped her step into a small pair of shoes.

Natalia didn't like the shoes, not one bit. She couldn't feel the ground under her feet, and it was so hard to walk!

The old woman quickly brushed out Natalia's hair, and the knots snarled dreadfully on the comb. Natalia had tears in her eyes by the time the woman finally braided Natalia's hair and hauled her, shoes clomping horribly, out the door and down another grey hallway.

At the end of the hallway was a big white room. The bright light hurt Natalia's eyes as the woman set her on a tall table. A handful of people in long white coats surrounded Natalia. "Has she eaten?" one of the people asked, while another put something into Natalia's mouth and another started looking at her eyes with a bright light.

"Not since the car ride," the old woman said. "No sign of vermin or infection, and other than some bruising, the only thing wrong with her appears to be the malnutrition the doctor warned about."

Someone wrapped a bit of fabric around Natalia's arm and it started to squeeze her arm so tight. Natalia protested, but the man just told Natalia to sit quietly as he listened to her heartbeat. They repeated this again a few minutes later, then the strip of cloth was removed and the man in the long white coat reached for a long shiny needle. Natalia tried to cringe away, but big hands held her in place. "Stay calm, child," the man said, then stuck the needle into Natalia's arm and blood flowed out into the glass container below the needle.

Alone in this strange white place, hurting and scared, Natalia stared to cry again, little tiny sobs that didn't make any noise in the loud white room. After the glass tube was full of bright red blood, the doctor took the needle out of Natalia's arm and someone else held a piece of cotton against the wound. Someone put a bandage over the cotton, and that was that.

One of the men in a long white coat picked Natalia up and carried her out the doors down another hallway. As they walked, Natalia's breathing slowed and the tiny sobs stopped. Her arm hurt where the needle had been, her head hurt where the woman had pulled her hair. The shoes felt like bricks tied to her feet and she didn't like how the trousers rubbed her legs.

They went through a door, then another one, down a hallway full of doors, until finally they stopped. The man, and the door opened from the inside. A strange young woman stood there. The man handed Natalia to the young woman, saying, "No signs of physical injury."

"Thank you," the woman said. The man closed the door behind him as he left. Natalia was alone in the room with the young woman.

"It is time for your supper," the woman said. Her voice was pleasant and her brown hair was coiled around her head in a long plait.

She set Natalia on the floor, and the first thing Natalia did was to sit down and untie the shoes, kicking them across the room.

The woman shook her head. "That isn't a nice way to behave," she said firmly. "Go pick up the shoes and put them by the bed. You will need them later."

Natalia glared at the woman, but when the woman didn't slap Natalia or say anything else, Natalia stood in her stockings and went to pick up the shoes. She placed them beside the small bed.

"Go sit at the table," the woman said. Grudgingly, Natalia did so. There was a tray on the table, with a covered plate. The woman removed the cover to reveal a small bowl with some grey mush in it.

Natalia made a face. She would much rather have berries; this did not look tasty at all. But she had not eaten since the strip of meat in the car, and she was very hungry. She picked up the spoon beside the bowl and started to eat the mush.

She was right; the mush was thin like soup and tasted like nothing. But still, Natalia ate every bite until it was all gone, and then she drank the water in the small metal mug beside the bowl. Setting the mug back on the tray, she looked at the woman.

"Are you going to tell me your name?" the woman asked.

Natalia wiped her nose with her sleeve. "Natalia."

"Natalia, I am Comrade Maria," the woman said. "Would you like to explore the room? You will be here for some days."

Natalia watched the woman, in case she was hiding something, but eventually Natalia stood up and looked around the room. It was a big room, nearly the size of Baba Yaga's hut, with walls and floor all painted white. There was a small toilet in the corner, discreet behind a small screen. There was the table and chair, just the right size for a little girl like Natalia. The bed in the corner was also small, and Natalia was reminded of the soldier's story of Snow White.

The thought of the soldier made Natalia sad. He had been her friend, and he had gone away and told the doctor all about Natalia, and now he would never remember Natalia ever again.

She clenched her fists. She wasn't going to cry! Natalia was going to be a soldier, and soldiers had to be tough! They had to be strong! Even if the soldier didn't remember Natalia, she would remember what he had taught her!

With determination, Natalia marched over to the bed. She touched at the sheets and the blanket, then knelt down to look under the bed. There was nothing there. Standing, Natalia looked in the small drawer beside the bed. In the drawer lay folded clothing. Natalia closed the drawer and walked back to the table.

On the far wall, taking up nearly half the wall, was a huge mirror. Natalia had never seen such a large mirror before, and she walked over to it. She had not seen her own reflection in so long, the girl looking back at her seemed a stranger. The girl had a little button nose and green eyes and red hair. Natalia touched the reflection. The girl looking back at her looked very old, nearly a grown-up girl.

"Would you like to read a book?" the woman asked. She sat on the edge of the small bed and looked at Natalia.

Natalia stepped away from the mirror and walked over to the woman. She looked down at her hands, small and clean. "I… I do not know how to read," she admitted, wondering if they would punish her for that.

"Then I will read the story to you," the woman said, patting the blanket.

Natalia jumped onto the bed and sat beside the woman, waiting expectantly.

The woman picked up a colorful book from the edge of the bed, and opened it so Natalia could see the pages. She read Natalia a story, speaking slowly and clearly and pointing at the pictures as she went.

Natalia listened with all her might, looking at the images on the pages. When the story was over and the woman closed the book, Natalia felt a pang of sadness.

"Can we read it again?" Natalia asked.

The woman smiled at Natalia. "Yes, once more," she said. "Then you need to go to sleep."

"I'm not tired," Natalia protested. "I can read all night!"

The woman opened the book to the front cover to read the story again. This time, the story was familiar to Natalia and she hung on the woman's every word.

Too soon the story ended. The woman helped Natalia remove her sweater and climb beneath the sheets. She pulled the blanket right up to Natalia's chin.

"Little girls who have had a long drive need to sleep," the woman said. She touched the light switch by the door, and the lights dimmed until Natalia could barely see the woman. "You will have a busy day tomorrow."

"What happens tomorrow?" Natalia asked.

"There will be some tests, that is all," the woman said.

Natalia gripped the blanket tight. Doctor Sokolov had talked about tests, and she didn't like that. "Will it hurt?" she asked in a small voice.

"Of course not," Comrade Maria said, but Natalia did not believe her. The woman smoothed Natalia's hair back from her face. "We want to see if you are a smart girl."

"I'm smart," Natalia said quickly. "I promise."

Comrade Maria smiled in the faint light. "Go to sleep, little one."

Natalia refused to close her eyes. She stared at the woman, still gripping the blanket tight.

The woman sighed. "Will you sleep if I sing you a song?"

In spite of her apprehension, Natalia's eyes grew wide. "You will sing me a song?" she asked. No one had sung to her in so very long, not since papa died. Ivan had tried to sing with Natalia, but they didn't know many of the words and they tended to make things up as they went. "I like songs."

"Then I will sing to you, but only if you go to sleep."

Natalia nodded and squirmed under the blankets.

The woman tucked the blankets around Natalia's shoulders, and started to sing in a quiet voice. She sang a song about a little bear in the forest, and Natalia listened to every note. When the song was done, Comrade Maria asked, "Will you sing that song with me?"

Clutching the blanket in her hands, Natalia sang along with the woman, the silly little song about the bear in the forest. She only got a few of the words wrong, and when they sang it for a second time, Natalia knew all the words and the tune by heart.

"Very good," the woman said. She stroked Natalia's hair as she pulled the blanket back up to Natalia's chin. "Now, it is time for little girls to sleep."

The woman stood up and left the room, closing the door behind her. For the first time since the forest that morning, Natalia was alone.

She sat up in bed and looked around the dimly lit room. In the faint light, she could see the small table, the dresser, the light reflecting off the big mirror.

She didn't like how the room smelled, nor how it was so quiet. In the forest, the air was clean and fresh and smelled like green things. She had been able to hear the birds and the squirrels during the day, and the owls hooting at night. The rustle of the leaves in the wind had lulled her to sleep.

Now, all she could hear was a faint, dull hum from the overhead lights.

Natalia lay down and burrowed under the blanket. She didn't like it here. She wanted to be in the forest, with Baba Yaga and with her soldier, and to drink from the rusalka's river.

She missed Baba Yaga. She missed her soldier.

Natalia curled in on herself, sucking on her thumb to keep from crying. Baba Yaga knew she was gone. And her soldier… the doctor said that her soldier would never remember her, and Natalia would never be able to talk about him again.

The sadness settled in Natalia's chest and spread out through her entire body, making her heavy and dark on the inside. Natalia wrapped her arm around her head and bit down on her thumb and cried herself to sleep.

* * *

The woman was shaking Natalia awake.

"Come, child, it is time for you to get up," she was saying, pulling back the blankets. Her hands went under Natalia's back to make her sit up. "It is morning."

Natalia rolled away from the woman and put her head under the blankets. She didn't want it to be morning; she was still sleeping.

"Natalia." The blankets were pulled back. "Stop being silly."

Natalia opened her eyes. The room was bright and cold, and the woman was moving around efficiently. "No."

The woman folded a piece of clothing and set it on top of the dresser. "Come and sit at the table for your breakfast."

Natalia rubbed her eyes as she slid off the bed. The floor was cold under her stocking feet. "There is food?" she asked, walking over to the small table half-asleep. "I don't have to find it?"

"Not today, little one." Comrade Maria helped Natalia sit in the chair, then lifted the cover from the tray. The small plate held a triangle of bread, half an apple, and best of all, a whole egg!

Natalia clasped her hands together in delight. "That's an egg!" she exclaimed. "Is it for me?"

"Yes, all of this is for you," the woman said. "The egg is boiled. Would you like me to crack the shell for you?"

"I can do it," Natalia said, and reached for the egg. Mama had owned a chicken that laid eggs through part of the winter, before it was slaughtered for food. Most often, Petrov and Natalia had to share the egg, but in those early winter months Natalia had sometimes had an egg all to herself.

 Now, she cracked the egg's shell gently against the plate and rolled it with her hand before picking the shell shards off with careful fingers. She was always careful with eggs, as if she messed up Petrov would take the egg away from her and eat it all himself.

When the egg was clean, Natalia opened her mouth and took a big bite. The egg white was rubbery and chewy, and the yolk yellow-grey, and Natalia ate it all up and licked her fingers when she was done.

"Mmm," she said, and smiled.

"Aren't you going to eat your bread?" Comrade Maria asked.

"What are you going to eat?" Natalia asked.

"I already had my breakfast," the woman said. "Everything on that plate is for you."

Natalia looked down at the plate. So much food, all for her! Belatedly, she remembered her manners. "Thank you, Comrade Maria," she said, then reached for the bread.

By the time Natalia finished the apple, her fingers were sticky and her belly was full. Comrade Maria made Natalia drink some water, then told her to use the toilet and wash her hands. Natalia was wide-awake by this point, and was done and back by the table in no time.

"Now we are going to go over your lessons," the woman said. She handed Natalia the sweater. "Put this on and sit down, we don't want you to get cold."

Natalia pulled the sweater over her head and adjusted the sleeves. The sweater made Natalia feel cozy warm. "I don't have any lessons," Natalia said. "Mama said I am too young to go to school."

"The today will be your first lesson," Comrade Maria said. She picked up a small stack of cards. "Are you ready?"

Uncertain about this whole process, Natalia tried to sit still in her little chair. "I think so."

The woman held up the first card. On the card was a blue square. "Do you know what this colour is?"

Natalia looked at the card, at the woman, then back to the card. She didn't know if she was offended or confused. Of course she knew her colours, she wasn't _stupid_. "It's blue," said Natalia.

Comrade Maria nodded. She laid down the card, and picked up another. "What is this colour?"

"Orange," Natalia said, growing more confused.

"And this one?"

They went though the whole stack of cards. Natalia knew the name of almost every colour, except for one that was a lovely shade of blue-purple. One of the cards had a strange mix of orange-red in the middle of the green, but Natalia didn't know what she was supposed to say at that one so she just shook her head.

After the woman had finished with the last card, she stacked the pile neatly and pushed it across the table to Natalia. "In that deck is a card that is different from the others," she said. "Can you show me the card that is different?"

Natalia took the cards and carefully looked through them. At first, she thought she was supposed to pick the card with the color she didn't know, but then she saw the strange green-red card. She picked it up and showed it to the woman.

"Can you tell me why this card is different?"

Feeling bold, Natalia said, "Because of that." She pointed at the red bits. "That is red." She moved her finger to the outer green square. "That is green."

Comrade Maria looked over Natalia's head and stared at the big mirror for a few seconds. "Why didn't you say that when I first showed you the card?"

Natalia shrugged, putting it back on the table. "I don't know."

The woman stacked the cards into a neat deck and put them to the side. "Let us move to the next lesson."

The lessons went on forever. Comrade Maria had Natalia put together a puzzle, then Natalia had to count as high as she could go. She got a bit confused around the forties, but she mumbled her way through to fifty and then it was easy. Comrade Maria stopped her at ninety-three.

"You know your numbers very well," the woman said.

"I had to count the cows every night," Natalia said proudly. "I would count one, two, three," and she demonstrated on her fingers. "And mama made me count as high as I could go!"

"Well done," Comrade Maria said. "Stop dangling out of that chair, child."

Natalia, who had slid out of the chair as far as she could go without falling, grudgingly sat upright.

Next came a series of truly strange questions, like what are clothes made out of? Which is the coldest, rain or ice? What tool do you use to hammer nails into wood? Which is bigger, a cow or a lion?

Natalia answered as best as she could. Some of the questions she knew she answered correctly, but on some she floundered, and the expression on Comrade Maria's face told Natalia she was incorrect.

By the time the woman finished the questions, Natalia felt bad and stupid. She folded her arms on the table and put her head down. Petrov had called her a dummy all the time, maybe he was right.

After a few moments, the woman was at Natalia's side, her hand on Natalia's back. Natalia sat up, ready to be yelled at, but was surprised when the woman smiled at her.

"You did well at your first day of lessons," Comrade Maria said.

"I didn't know everything," Natalia said, still sad.

"But you will learn." The woman stood and held out her hand. "It's time for exercise. Come with me."

The woman made Natalia put on her shoes, and off they went, though the door and down the long grey corridor. "Where are we going?" Natalia asked as they went through a big steel door.

"We are going to the gymnasium," the woman told Natalia. "Have you ever been to a gymnasium?"

"No," Natalia said. She had no idea what a gymnasium was, but maybe the woman would let her run around. Her legs ached from sitting still for so long.

They went down a flight of stairs, then through another set of doors. The room on the other side of the doors was big as a barn! Natalia walked forward, dropping the woman's hand as she stared around her in wonder.

There were all sorts of interesting things! Natalia walked onto the grey surface, marveling at the softness of the floor beneath her shoes.

"You can take your shoes off," Comrade Maria called, sitting down by the wall and pulling out a small book.

Natalia needed no further encouragement. She ran back to the woman's side and removed her shoes and stockings, then ran back out onto the gymnasium floor. The surface was squishy and soft and Natalia jumped all around.

Then she began to investigate the equipment in the room. There was a little board ramp that led to nowhere, and when Natalia climbed up on it, it was springy under her feet. She jumped on the board and was immediately catapulted into the air. She didn't have time to regain her balance before she hit the ground.

The shock of the impact knocked the air out of Natalia's lungs. She rolled onto her back, momentarily stunned. When she got her wits about her again, she sat up. Nothing hurt too much. Giving her head a shake, Natalia stood up and looked around. Comrade Maria was still sitting by the wall, writing in her book. The woman didn't appear to have noticed Natalia's fall. Shaking her head again, Natalia walked back to the springy board. She stepped on it gingerly. When nothing happened, she gave a little jump. The board sprang under her feet, giving her an extra boost. She landed on the floor, stumbling a bit before regaining her feet. She ran around and jumped on the board again, this time flying even farther before hitting the floor.

Natalia smiled to herself. Once she got the hang of the thing, jumping off the board was fun!

She kept jumping off the board and running back for more until she grew bored. She wandered around the gymnasium, looking at all the neat objects. She stopped beside a row of large balls. Three were black, two were brown. She tried to pick up one of the balls, but it was heavier than it looked. Determined, Natalia planted her feet on the ground and lifted the ball in both arms. There, she had done it. She put the ball down and rolled it into place, then carried on exploring.

In the middle of the gymnasium, three long ropes hung from the ceiling. Natalia touched one of the ropes. It felt just like the rope swing hanging on the big tree in her old village. Petrov and the boys swung on the rope all the time, hardly ever letting the little ones have a turn. But now, there was no one else around.

Natalia took hold of the rope in both hands and jumped up. She swung for a few minutes, then she had to let go. Holding onto the rope like that hurt her hands.

Natalia examined the rope. The old rope swing in her village had a knot at the bottom, to let the children sit or stand as they swung. Natalia picked up the end of the rope and tried to tie a knot, but the rope was very thick and she wasn't entirely sure how to tie such a knot in the first place.

Natalia crouched down and glared at the rope. What was she to do? She wanted to swing, but how could she make the rope turn into a swing?

If her soldier had been there, Natalia might have asked him to tie a knot in the rope for her. Maybe the woman might be able to help Natalia.

Standing, Natalia retraced her steps to the wall, where Comrade Maria sat with her book. "Excuse me," Natalia said, remembering to be polite. The woman looked up. "Can you help me?"

The woman laid her book aside. "What do you need?" she asked patiently.

Encouraged, Natalia pointed at the rope. "I want to swing but I don't know how to tie a knot."

"What are you asking?" the woman asked.

Natalia rubbed her head. The woman was looking directly at her, and it was confusing Natalia. "Can you tie a knot in the rope?" she asked after a moment.

The woman stood up and held out her hand for Natalia. "Yes, I can."

Natalia took Comrade Maria's hand and they walked across the gymnasium. Natalia was so happy that she even gave a little skip as they reached the ropes. Comrade Maria deftly tied a knot in the bottom of one of the ropes and stood back as Natalia pulled herself up.

"How is that?" Comrade Maria asked.

"Perfect," Natalia said, swinging her legs to get moving.

"Would you like me to push you?" the woman asked. Natalia nodded, and the woman put her hands on Natalia's back and gave a mighty push.  Natalia let out a squeal as she flew through the air on the rope swing. This was so much fun! When she swung back to Comrade Maria, the woman pushed her again and again, and again, until Natalia was laughing so hard she nearly fell off the rope.

"All right," the woman said after a while. She was also smiling. "Let's try a few more things."

The woman made Natalia walk along something she called a balance beam; to Natalia it was easier than walking along the old fallen trees in the forest. Then they went to the bars, and Natalia held herself up on the bar for as long as her hands would let her.

The woman showed Natalia a big box full of colorful objects; small balls and ribbons and hoops. Natalia picked a blue ribbon and ran around in circles to see the ribbon flutter in the air.

As Natalia ran, giggling at the sight of that blue ribbon flying along after her, one of the shadows detached itself from the corner of the room. Natalia dropped the ribbon and backed away, too startled to speak, as Doctor Sokolov walked across the floor towards her.

"How is our littlest charge doing today?" the man asked, his voice making Natalia's tummy squirm in apprehension.

"She is doing well," Comrade Maria said. The woman stood straight as she spoke. "You will have my report by the end of the day."

"Good." The doctor stopped in front of Natalia and knelt. He smiled at her, his teeth big and straight in his mouth. "How do you feel, Natalia?"

Natalia put her finger in her mouth. She didn't want to answer the man. He had taken her away from her forest and told her she could never speak of her soldier, not to anybody. Natalia didn't like him.

Comrade Maria squeezed Natalia's shoulder. "Answer the doctor, child."

Natalia scrunched up her toes in the soft floor. "I am well," she said in a whisper.

"That is good to hear." The doctor stood. "Bring her along, we are ready to start the endurance test."

""Yes, doctor." Comrade Maria picked Natalia up and set the girl on her hip, following the doctor across the gymnasium floor.

"Where are we going?" Natalia asked, gripping the woman's shirt collar tight. She didn't like the sound of this test.

"We are going to the laboratories," the woman said quietly. "Natalia, you must remember to do your best."

Natalia stared at the woman's face. Up close like this, Natalia could see the small freckles on her cheek. "At what?"

Up ahead, the doctor said, "No talking."

Comrade Maria hitched Natalia up on her hip and hurried along after the man.

After walking through a few corridors, the doctor opened the door to a big white room. In the room were several men, and strange-looking equipment all around.

The doctor headed over to the equipment while Comrade Maria lifted Natalia onto a long metal counter. "How about a drink?" the woman asked. "Are you thirsty?"

Natalia nodded. As the woman walked away Natalia looked around the room. The strange men wore white coats over their clothing, the fabric painfully bright.

Natalia didn't want to be in this white room, with the white-coated men speaking in whispers. She wanted to be back in her forest.

The woman brought Natalia a cup of water and watched as Natalia drank the whole thing. "Well done," the woman said with an encouraging smile. "Are you ready?"

"What's going to happen?" Natalia whispered.

"It's going to be very easy," Comrade Maria said. She lifted Natalia off the counter and walked her over to a scary piece of equipment, one with wires poking out from all over. "You are going to stand on that spot, there," and the woman pointed to a wide black belt stretched across two metal rollers. "And you are going to run slowly."

Natalia stared at the belt. "Why?"

The woman knelt down at Natalia's side. "We want to see how strong you are," she said. "Now, out of these clothes."

The woman helped Natalia out of all her clothes except for her underwear, and then made her step up onto the belt. The white-coated men put sticky circles on her chest, and attached wires to the circles.

"What are those?" Natalia demanded, touching the wires.

"They are to monitor your exertion," the doctor said. He knelt beside the belt and held out a long clear tube. "Child, I want you to breathe into this tube."

Natalia complied, growing more confused about the adults' antics by the minute. She breathed into the tube normally, then, at the doctor's instruction, with all her might.

 "Now," the doctor said, putting the breathing tube away, "It is time for you to run."

The belt started moving under Natalia's feet, so she could walk and yet remain in the same place. It was a strange sensation, but once Natalia got the hang of the motion, she could walk easily.

The speed of the belt slowly increased, until Natalia was running in a slow jog. It was strange to be running without moving, especially in the white room with men all around watching her. Natalia was used to running in the forest, with the grass soft under her feet, the wind pushing along at her back, as the trees loomed tall and silent above her.

Natalia ran and ran and ran. After what felt like forever, with her legs starting to get tired, Natalia asked, "Can I stop?"

"Not yet," said the doctor. He was watching a big bank of screens with little coloured lined moving all around. "Keep at it, child."

So Natalia kept running.

Her legs began to ache and her breath came harder. Her mouth was dry and she felt hot and cold at the same time. "Can I stop now?" she asked as she jogged along on the belt.

"No. Keep running."

Natalia ran on. As she focused on putting one foot in front of the other, something shifted and she nearly fell. Stumbling hard, she regained her balance without toppling over. "I don't like this!" she cried out as the belt move relentlessly under her feet.

"Keep running." The doctor's voice was cold and relentless, like ice in Natalia's head.

"I want to stop!"

"You cannot stop," the doctor said. "Keep running."

Every step hurt, an ache deep in her chest spreading like fire through her entire body. Natalia's lungs burned, her legs burned, and grey spots danced in her eyes. "I want to stop!" she said again.

"I told you, keep running!"

Natalia couldn't stand it any more. With one last panting breath, she stopped running.

The movement of the belt under her feet flung her backwards onto the cold white floor, ripping the wires off her chest. Natalia's head smacked painfully against the hard floor and she lay still, unable to move.

Rough hands pulled Natalia's upright, shaking her. "What is wrong with you?" the doctor demanded, shaking her again. "I told you to keep running."

"I don't want to!" Natalia wailed, struggling against the man.

"You disobeyed me!"

"Let me go!" Natalia gave a final twist, and managed to break free of the doctor's grip. "I don't like you!"

The doctor stood, towering over Natalia. His hands were clenched into fists but Natalia wasn't scared of him, she was a soldier and soldiers weren't scared of anything. She clenched her own fists and stared up at him. If he was going to beat her for disobeying orders, he could just do it! She wasn't scared!

The doctor ground his teeth. "You are a willful child," he said. "Have you always been this difficult?"

"I'm not willful!" Natalia said, for although she did not know what the word meant, he said it with anger and Natalia didn't like it.

"Yes, you are." The doctor turned to Comrade Maria. "Take this insolent child back to her rooms. We were able to measure useable data before her tantrum."

Comrade Maria hurried over from her spot by the wall. "Come along," she said to Natalia. "Let's go."

Walking was difficult, as Natalia's legs kept giving out on the way over to the bench that held her clothes. Eventually, the woman wrapped Natalia up a large towel and carried her out of the room.

Natalia wasn't crying, not really, but every part of her hurt and she was so sad and so angry that she couldn't help making small keening noises. Comrade Maria rubbed her back soothingly as she walked. "You were told to keep running," the woman said softly. "Why did you stop?"

"I couldn't run any more," Natalia said. "Not any more!"

The woman shushed her. "That's over now," she said. "How about a warm bath to help you feel better?"

Natalia didn't want a bath, she wanted to go home to her forest. But she didn't say anything as Comrade Maria took her into the bathing room and filled a tub full of water. Natalia sat bundled up in the towel and watched, aching too much to move.

The woman unwrapped Natalia from the towel and helped her remove her underwear, then plopped her into the bathtub. The water was warm, nearly hot, and Natalia sat for long minutes, staring at the water's surface.

The woman broke the silence. "Here, drink this," she said, and handed Natalia a mug. The liquid in the mug was cool and very sweet, almost like honey, and Natalia drank it all up. "Well done."

The sweet drink did much to improve Natalia's spirits. She splashed in the water with her hands, playing with the little bubbles on the water's surface.

As the water cooled, Natalia started to feel better. The sick feeling in her belly faded away and she amused herself by lifting handfuls of water and then letting them go to splash into the tub.

The woman watched Natalia with a faint smile on her face. "Do you feel better now, little one?" she asked.

"I do," Natalia admitted. She made swirls in the water with her fingers. "If…"

"What is it?"

Natalia looked at the woman. "If I have to go run again, I can do it," she said with determination. "I'm strong, I can do it."

The woman put her hand on Natalia's head. "Can you keep a secret?" the woman whispered. Natalia nodded, her lips pressed tight shut. "You did a good job in there."

Natalia frowned, confused. "But the doctor yelled at me. He said I was willful."

The woman touched the tip of Natalia's nose. "That willful nature will serve you well in here. Remember that."

The woman helped Natalia out of the bath, wrapped her in another big towel, and carried her back to the small  white room where Natalia had slept the night before. There, Natalia got dressed in a new set of clothes, nearly identical to the ones she had worn the night before, and ate a small bowl of soup that had bits of potato in it.

After the meal, the woman put Natalia into bed and told her stories until Natalia's eyes closed, and she slipped into sleep.

When Natalia woke from her nap, she was alone in the little room.

She sat up and looked around. How long had she slept? Her head felt fuzzy and her body ached, especially her legs. With a wide yawn, Natalia slipped out of the bed.

The floor was cold under her feet as Natalia walked over to the door to the hallway. She tried the doorknob, and the door opened.

Natalia peeked out of the door into the hallway. The white hall was brightly lit and silent, with no sign of anyone. Wondering where the woman had gone, Natalia tiptoed out into the hallway.

She looked left, and she looked right. There was another doorway just a little ways down the corridor, on the same side as Natalia's room. She wondered what was in that room.

The hallway was silent and still.

Edging forward on bare feet, Natalia crept up to the door. She reached up and twisted the door handle and the door opened without a sound.

The room inside was dark, with dim lights and lots of shadows. Sitting in chairs were two men, who looked up, startled, as the door swung inward.

Natalia dimly registered the men, and the strange equipment in the dark room, but what caught her attention was the large mirror on the wall, just like her mirror! It even hung in the same place as in her room, like a window.

"You have a big mirror," she told the men.

One of them swiftly stood up and shooed Natalia back out into the hallway, just as Comrade Maria came hurrying down the corridor.

"She woke up early," the man said, closing the door to the room behind him. "You need to keep a closer eye on her."

"I thought that was your job," Comrade Maria retorted as she guided Natalia back into her own little room. The woman closed the door firmly. "What were you doing, running off like that?"

Natalia shrugged. "I woke up."

"I can see that." The woman pushed Natalia's hair back from her face. "Go make up your bed. We will do lessons again in a few minutes."

Natalia sighed, but she went to straighten her bed sheets. She didn't want to do lessons. She wanted to go home.

* * *

After another set of grueling lessons, in which the woman kept asking Natalia so many strange questions, Natalia was left to play with a box of brightly coloured blocks while the woman sat in the corner of the room and watched.

This was a weird place, Natalia decided, stacking the blocks as high as they would go. She hadn't thought this was what soldiers would do, when they were not gone to war in far-off lands.

With one final block, the tower fell down in a satisfying crash. Natalia gathered the blocks back together to begin again.

But her soldier had said that all soldiers needed to be able to read, so perhaps it made sense that there would be lessons. Natalia made a circle of red blocks to form the base of another tower. Maybe Comrade Maria would teach Natalia how to read, and then Natalia could read mama's letter, and she would know everything about mama's adventure with Petrov and Ana.

When the block tower crashed down again, Natalia was bored. She stacked the blocks by colour and size, then ran over to Comrade Maria. "Can we do something else?" she asked, leaning on the woman's knee.

The woman closed her book. "What would you like to do?" she asked.

Natalia shrugged. "I don't know. Can we go outside?"

"Not today," the woman said. "But how about the obstacle course?"

Natalia scrunched up her nose. "What's that?"

"That is a place where restless little girls can exercise." The woman stood. "Go put on your shoes."

Natalia sighed, but obeyed. Why was everyone around here so set on making Natalia wear shoes all the time?

Comrade Maria held Natalia's hand as they left the room, this time turning left instead of right at one spot in the hallway. They entered another large room, rather like the gymnasium, but this room held strange structures, with ropes and ladders all around.

"Go ahead," Comrade Maria said. "You can play."

Natalia didn't move. "How?"

"Well, you can start here," said the woman, gesturing at a ladder laid flat on the ground. "Go along the path marked in blue. See how fast you can be."

Somewhat dubious, Natalia stepped out of her shoes and socks and climbed up on the first rung of the flat ladder. It was a big step to the next rung, but Natalia was nothing if not determined. Her legs still hurt from that morning, but she just clenched her fists and took another step on the ladder. She was a big soldier girl and she wasn't weak.

After the flat ladder came a series of big truck tires, laid out flat on the ground. Natalia climbed up on those and dashed across their bouncy surfaces. It was almost fun, to have the tires squish under her toes.

Next came a big rope ladder, stretched up to the top of a high wall. Natalia stepped onto the bottom rope rung, and nearly fell through the big hole, but then she regained her balance and managed to pull herself up and up. Progress was slow, but finally Natalia was near the very top of the wall.

"How do I get down?" she called out to Comrade Maria.

Without looking up, the woman said, "Go down the slide on the other side."

Natalia poked her head over the top of the wall. There, as the woman had said, was a long shiny slide!

Wriggling with glee, Natalia sat on the slide and whooshed down. It was so much fun! Wanting to try that again, Natalia ran back around to the foot of the rope ladder and climbed up as fast as she could to slide down.

"Child," the woman called from the side of the room. "Continue with the obstacle course. You can play later."

Natalia made a face that the woman could not see, but she continued on to the next station, a plank bridge that wobbled precariously under Natalia's feet. Not seeing any other way, Natalia ran across the bridge at top speed, narrowly missing being pitched to the ground by the twisting planks.

The last station was a series of little walls, as high as Natalia's chin. She looked at the walls, shrugged, and walked around them. "I'm finished," she said to the woman as she climbed up on the bench.

"You skipped the last station," the woman admonished. "Go back and finish properly."

Natalia didn't really want to, but she slid back to the ground and headed over to the little walls. She pulled herself over the first wall and jumped to the ground on the other side, then did the same thing with the other four walls. It was rather boring, and she was glad to be finished.

The woman was waiting for her. "There now, doesn't it feel better to have completed the course?"

"No," Natalia said. "Can I go play on the slide some more?"

"Of course," the woman said with a smile. "Go have fun."

Natalia climbed up the rope ladder and slid down the slide until even that got boring. This time, when she rejoined Comrade Maria, the woman closed her book and stood up. "Now what do we do?" Natalia asked.

"We are going to the physicians for your weigh-in." The woman took Natalia's hand and guided her along.

"Why?" Natalia asked.

"Because little girls who live in the forest all summer do not get enough nutrition to grow properly," the woman said. "We need to make sure that you get the right food to grow up big and strong."

"But I like berries," Natalia protested. "They are the best food. And so tasty, better than mush."

"Fruit is an important part of a balanced diet, not the entire diet." They went through a big steel door.

"Bears eat fruit and they are big and healthy," Natalia said.

"Bears also eat meat and other things," the woman countered. "What else do you like to eat?"

"I like eggs," Natalia said, hopping along on one foot. "And sometimes nuts."

The woman opened the door to the big white room from the night before, where the men in white coats had held Natalia down and poked her with needles. Natalia shrank back, trying to hide behind Comrade Maria's leg, but the woman pulled her along.

"We will see what food suits you best," the woman said as she picked Natalia up and put her on the table. "Now, behave."

The men in white coats came into the room. They made Natalia stand on a scale, they measured her height, they even measured around her head and her belly and her arms and legs.

One of them brought over a small cup and held it out to Natalia. The cup held a brown liquid. "Drink this," said the man.

Natalia wrinkled her nose at the liquid. "No."

Comrade Maria took the cup from the man. "Natalia, if you drink this, I will give you a spoonful of honey."

Natalia liked honey, but she still wasn't sure about the brown liquid. She looked at it again. "What is it?"

"A vitamin tonic. To help you grown big and strong."

More than anything, Natalia wanted to grow strong. She took the small cup in her hand, held her breath, and drank the liquid down.

It was disgusting, tasting like metal and dirt, and Natalia screwed up her eyes and made a face and exclaimed, "Yuck!"

"Well done." The woman handed Natalia a cup of water. "Are you ready to go back to your room?"

Natalia drank all the water but couldn't get that horrible taste out of her mouth. "Yes," she said, sticking her tongue out.

Back in the room, Comrade Maria gave Natalia the promised spoonful of honey. Natalia licked the spoon slowly, enjoying the sweetness on her tongue. The woman was setting up things at the little table. When Natalia was finished with the honey, she walked over to the table and sat in her  little chair. "What are you doing?"

"It is time to go over yesterday's lessons," the woman said. She set the stack of colour cards on the table. "Do you remember these cards?" she asked, looking over Natalia's head.

"Yes." Natalia turned around to see what the woman was looking at, but all she saw was the big mirror.

"Good." The woman pushed the cards toward Natalia. "I want you to put them in the order I showed them to you yesterday."

Puzzled, Natalia looked at the cards. She pushed them around so she could see all the colours at once.

"Come along, child."

At the woman's prompting, Natalia moved the cards into the order they had been the day before. Natalia couldn't quite remember which card had come first, the green or the white card, but she tried her best, and when she was done she handed the stack back to the woman.

"Well done," said the woman. She put the cards on the floor, out of sight, and handed Natalia the little book from the previous night. "Do you remember this story?"

"I do," Natalia said. She opened the book up, to see the pages with the colourful pictures. "I like this story."

"Can you tell me what the story is about?"

Natalia nodded. She turned to the first page and pointed at the picture, and started to tell the story. She remembered most of the words, and even remembered where to turn the pages.

When she was finished, she closed the book. "The end," she declared, and looked up at the woman. Comrade Maria was staring at Natalia with wide eyes. Natalia sat still in her chair, suddenly uncertain. "Did I get it right?" she asked in a small voice.

The woman blinked. "Yes, " she said, taking the book in her hands. "You did very well."

Still, the woman looked so strange that Natalia was not reassured. She sat and curled her hands together while the woman put the book down beside the cards.

"Now," the woman said. "I need you to tell me another story. Can you tell me the story of how you found food in the woods?"

That was an easy story to remember. Natalia launched into a long tale about finding clover and berries in the forest, then about the nuts and how Natalia knew how to crack nuts open and eat the nutmeat inside.

Seeing the encouraging expression on the woman's face, Natalia went on, detailing the few times she had found mushrooms that she knew were safe from what her mama had told her so long ago. Once, Natalia admitted, she thought she could catch a fish but the fish in the shallows of the river were very fast and slippery so Natalia was never able to catch a single one.

When Natalia was finished her story, the woman patted her on the head and said she had done a good job. Then it was time for supper, and Natalia enjoyed her bowl of vegetable soup and the bread and the cheese. When she had finished, Comrade Maria read to Natalia from a large book without pictures, until Natalia was nodding her head over the pages. The woman tucked Natalia into bed and they sang the song about the bear, and then Comrade Maria turned out the lights and left the room.

Natalia was so sleepy after her long day. But she missed the sounds of the forest and she ached all over, and as she fell asleep, the only thought in her mind was her  desire to return to the forest and be alone again.

* * *

Natalia woke suddenly to darkness.

She pulled the blanket up to her chin, too scared to move. She had heard the leshy! He had come to the door of her little forest house and was trying to get her to come outside so he could eat her all up!

But that was wrong; Natalia wasn't in her little forest house. She was in the big room with the concrete walls and there were no trees and the leshy wasn't there. Was he?

Taking a deep breath, Natalia sat up. In the faint dim light from the overhead lights, Natalia could see the outline of the room's furniture. There was no leshy there. Maybe he was outside, waiting to eat her up!

Natalia slid out of bed. She pulled on the sweater that lay on the floor before tiptoeing to the door. She pressed her ear against the door, but could hear no sound.

Maybe the leshy wasn't at her door after all.

Natalia went back to the bed. Her foot bumped against the shoes on the floor, and all of a sudden, a thought occurred to Natalia.

She could go home.

True, the doctor's car had driven a long way from her forest, but Natalia was strong. She could leave this place and walk back to her forest house! They had driven along the road; all Natalia had to do was to follow the road!

Determined, Natalia sat down and pulled on her shoes in the dim light. While she didn't like the shoes, she couldn't deny that the ground outside would be cold and shoes would keep her feet warm until the sun came out.

Carefully, Natalia stood and went over to the door. The door handle was unlocked, and Natalia quickly squeezed out of the door, closing it helpfully behind her.

The white hallway was silent and still.

Taking a deep breath, Natalia walked down the hallway. Her shoes didn't make any sound on the white floor.

It took forever for Natalia to retrace the path from that first day. Twice, she heard footsteps nearby, and she hid as best she could until the footsteps disappeared into the distance.

Finally, she reached the doorway that had led to the outside. Taking a deep breath, Natalia pushed the door open and slipped outside.

The night was freezing cold. Natalia shivered as she eased the door closed behind her. The compound was lit with yellow lights shining onto the ground, but there were spots of darkness where  Natalia could hide. Determined to find her way home, Natalia tiptoed through the dark spots towards the big gate where the car had driven through that first day.

The gate was shut.

Dismayed, Natalia ducked behind the bumper of a truck and tried to think about what to do next. Maybe she could climb over a wall? She didn't think that waiting until dawn would be a good idea – people would be able to see her and they might chase her down and hurt her again.

As Natalia tried to think, she heard the rumble of an automobile engine on the other side of the gate. Two soldiers came out of a door and hurried towards the gate. One of them held a rifle at the ready while the other turned the big wheel in the centre of the gate, and swung the gate inwards. The bright headlights of the truck flashed and bumped slowly through the gate. The truck stopped just inside the gate while the soldiers circled it and looked at every bit, under the truck and in the back.

Natalia clenched her fists in determination. This was it. This was her chance. Moving  through the shadows, Natalia inched toward to the open gateway. The soldiers were so busy searching the truck that they didn't notice her as she crept around the wall, or as she darted into the darkness on the other side of the wall.

She had done it. She was out of the compound.

Natalia hurried along the road until the lights of the compound were far behind her. The night was thick with darkness, lit only from the tiny stars overhead. Natalia could just barely see the road at her feet, but that was enough. She would find her way home.

Natalia started running.

* * *

When the sun rose, Natalia was exhausted and so thirsty, but she knew she could not stop now. She could never stop, not until she got home.

Her feet hurt and her legs hurt and her head hurt, but most of all Natalia was _so thirsty_. When she saw a little stream at the side of the road, Natalia had never been more thankful. She stumbled down the embankment and knelt by the stream to drink handful after handful of water.

After she had drunk all she could, Natalia sat by the small stream and looked out at the early morning landscape.

This place was very different from her forest. There were no trees, only rocky hills and scrub in every direction. She would never be able to find a place to hide in this land.

That was all right. She was going to find her forest again and be home and live there all by herself until her mama came to find her.

Natalia made herself stand. She had a long way to go.

* * *

Twice, Natalia heard a motorcar in the distance, and twice, she slid down the embankment and pressed herself flat against the rocks and gravel, waiting until the sound of the vehicle had died away again. Only then did she climb back up to the road and carry on.

She wasn't running any longer. It was all Natalia could do to put one foot in front of the other. She ached all over, and she was so hungry.

When the sun was high overhead, Natalia heard the sound of another approaching automobile. She scurried down the embankment and crouched down by the rocks, waiting for the vehicle to drive past as the others had.

Only this time, the vehicle drove right up to the spot on the road above Natalia's head, and slowed to a stop. The engine turned off, and in the suddenly stillness, Natalia heard boots on the gravel.

Natalia was so scared that she couldn't breathe, couldn't move. They had found her!

Footsteps on the gravel embankment, and the doctor came into view. He walked down to where  Natalia was hiding, then he sat right down at Natalia's side.

"Did anyone help you leave the compound?" was his first question.

Natalia sat up. "No," she said in a shaking voice. "I wanted to leave and I left, all by myself."

The man looked at Natalia. He didn't appear  angry, only thoughtful. "Where are you going?"

Natalia shifted on the ground, standing up. "To my forest."

"I thought you wanted to be a soldier."

Natalia rubbed her cheek. "I am a soldier," she said, but in a whisper. "I want to go home."

The doctor sighed. "Do you understand that winter is coming?" he said as she reached into his pocket and pulled out a bar of chocolate. "You will freeze to death in the forest all by yourself."

"No, I won't."

The doctor unwrapped a bar of chocolate. He broke off a square and put it in his mouth. "How would you find food in the snow?"

Natalia was unable to take her eyes off the chocolate. "I can do it," she whispered. Her mouth was watering at the sight of the chocolate. She was so hungry!

The doctor handed Natalia a square of chocolate, and she put it into her mouth. The sweet melty goodness was the best thing Natalia had ever tasted.  "Child, do you know what soldiers do?" the doctor asked.

Natalia shook her head.

"They protect the greater good," the doctor said gravely. "They work hard to protect the people, and the ideals, of the Soviet Republic. They help to protect the future."

Natalia just looked at the man. His face was serious, but his eyes were glowing in the midday sunshine, and she wasn't sure what to say.

"Natalia, I believe that you can be one of the best soldiers that the department  has ever seen," he went on. "You have shown us that you are a very smart and resourceful little girl. You are strong and resilient, and I believe that you might be the one I am looking for."

"Looking for? For what?" Natalia asked.

The doctor reached out a hand and traced the air over Natalia's head. "To be the perfect soldier," he said. His voice was funny; it made Natalia's tummy squirm. "But for that, little one, you need to agree to stay with us. No more trying to escape. You need to commit to being a soldier. That means no running away, no disobeying."

Natalia hunched over. She wanted to be a soldier, to protect people, but she wanted to be home in her forest all by herself.

"Can you do that, little one?" the doctor asked. "Can you commit to staying with us to become a soldier?"

Natalia picked at the hem of her sleeve. "Forever?" she asked in a tiny voice.

"Not forever," the doctor said, and he was smiling now with his big teeth. "Just for a few years, until we determine if you will succeed in the program."

Natalia clenched her hands into fists. "But I want to go back to the forest," she said.

"You can never go back to that forest," the doctor said. He stood up and herded Natalia up the embankment. "Do you understand me? Even if you leave here, you cannot go to the forest. The only place you can go is to an orphanage, where all the children with no parents go."

She didn't want that! Natalia let the doctor put her in the car. He climbed in at her side while the driver started the engine. The car turned around, and they were driving back in the direction Natalia so painstakingly come.

"I don't want to go to an orphanage," Natalia said after a few minutes. "I want to be a soldier."

"Well, then, you have made your decision." The doctor looked down at Natalia. "Do you understand that this means no more running off? You are to stay on the compound and obey orders?"

Natalia looked out the window at the passing ground. She wanted to be outside, to be in the open air. "What if mama comes to get me?" she asked the doctor. "In her letter she said she'd come find me."

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Who told you that?" he asked. "You can't read."

Natalia looked at her hands. She wasn't able to speak of her soldier, but it had been him who had told her all about mama's adventure, and that she would one day come back for Natalia.

At Natalia's silence, the doctor sighed. "If your mother comes for you, child, we will let you go. Does that make you feel better?"

Natalia nodded, feeling instantly better. If mama came, Natalia would be ready!

 "All right, then." They drove for some distance in silence, then the doctor said, "But we will have to do something about your name."

Natalia frowned. "I like my name."

"If you are to be a soldier, you need a suitable name. Natalia is the name of a child." He considered her. "We will call you Natasha. That is the name of a soldier."

Natalia scrambled up onto her knees. "I don't want to be Natasha," she protested. "I'm Natalia!"

"Sit down, that's an order." The doctor handed Natalia a canteen. "Drink."

Natalia didn't want to drink, but she didn't know what else to say. She didn't want to be Natasha! Her name was Natalia!

After hardly any time at all, they drove up to the gate of the compound. The driver stopped on the far side of the compound, near a building Natalia had never been inside. The doctor helped Natalia out of the vehicle, and guided her towards the building.

"Where are we going?" Natalia asked, clutching the canteen to her chest. "Where is Comrade Maria?"

"Comrade Maria is assigned to the White Room," the doctor said. "You will not see Comrade Maria again."

Natalia gripped the canteen so tight her fingers hurt. She had liked Comrade Maria; the woman had been nice to her. "Can I say goodbye?" Natalia asked.

"No." The doctor opened the door to the building and took Natalia inside. They walked down a long dark hallway. At the far end of the hallway was a door, a shiny door, painted red.

The doctor stopped in the hallway and knocked once, twice on the door. The door swung inward without a sound.

"Come, Natasha Romanova," said the doctor, his hand tight on Natalia's shoulder. "Welcome to the Red Room."

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With dialogue ~~stolen~~ repurposed from [chapter six of Widow Maker](http://archiveofourown.org/works/886492/chapters/1785834).

* * *

_epilogue_

**1,532 days later**

* * *

In all of her nine years, Natalia had never been as scared as when the door opened on that room. She had a stolen gun in her waistband, two bullets left, and no idea what was on the other side of the door.

All she knew was that she was going to die.

The door opened and the adults accompanying Natalia pushed her into the room. "You must make it out the other door," said one of the adults, and the door behind Natalia closed with a clang.

There was indeed a door on the far side of the room, and in front of that door was a man. A big man, dressed all in black, and Natalia knew she would never be able to overpower that man on her own. She was may be a soldier, but she was small and the man was large.

Then the man turned, and four years of training in the Red Room melted away. It was the soldier, _her_ soldier, from the forest so long ago! He turned more, and Natalia could see his metal arm shining in the overhead lights, and with sudden clarity everything came together.

Natalia had heard rumors of the Winter Soldier, a man with a metal arm. Everyone knew the Winter Soldier was deadly, without mercy, and in all her time in the Red Room Natalia had never put that together with the man she had known in the forest.

The man in the forest had been her friend; but this man looked at her with cold eyes. This man did not know Natalia.

The doctor had been right, they had taken the time in the forest away from the man. This man did not know Natalia at all.

Natalia wanted to cry. How could she escape her friend? How could she beat the Winter Soldier?

The Winter Soldier stared down at Natalia. "Is this all you have?" he asked. He did not sound angry or upset, just… bored. "You stand there and stare at me?"

Natalia didn't know what to say.

The man took in a breath and let it out. "You are running out of time," he said, and now there was menace in his words. "Come along, child, make your move."

Natalia lifted her chin. She had come a long way from the forest of her childhood. She had been four years in the Red Room, four years of difficult training. Natalia was a soldier herself now, a brave soldier who had undergone rigorous training. Two years before, she had been selected to participate in The Experiment, an extremely painful process that had resulted in Natalia being stronger, faster than any of the other children.

She was a soldier now, and she would not let a brief friendship from her childhood weaken her resolve.

She was on one side of the Winter Soldier, and the door was on the other. He was unlikely to move, and everyone knew the Winter Soldier killed everyone that stood in his way.

Natalia did not have a choice.

She pulled the gun out of her waistband and fired at the man's chest. Only, the weight of the gun and her own fear pulled the shot wide and the bullet hit the man's shoulder, spinning him back and around and Natalia was running towards the door, but the Winter Soldier caught her with his metal arm and shook her hard before flinging her to the ground. He was on her then, grabbing the gun from her and then the others were there, holding Natalia by the hands and shoulders and hauling her away from the Winter Soldier. The commandant of the program stormed in, so angry Natalia thought he might kill her himself.

Then she heard a sound she hadn't heard in years.

Laughter.

The Winter Soldier was laughing at Natalia, holding the gun in his metal hand while his blood dripped down to the floor. "Finally," the Winter Soldier said, his voice so familiar and welcome that Natalia's knees nearly collapsed out from under her. "One of the cadets does something to impress me."

"She shot you," the commandant snapped.

"I didn't think she would be armed," the Winter Soldier said. He pushed away the soldiers who were trying to tend his wound. "This is what I get when I assume anything."

The adults dragged Natalia out of the room, away from the Winter Soldier and the commandant. They flung her into an empty room and left her there for hours. Natalia was so angry that they hadn't let her complete the assignment, yet terrified that they would let the Winter Soldier punish her for her actions.

Only, would the Winter Soldier kill her? Everyone knew the Winter Soldier was without mercy, but Natalia knew the Winter Soldier as her friend from the forest. Even that was a long time ago, however. The memories of Baba Yaga and the rusalka seemed distant to Natalia now, along with the memories of that green forest with its tall trees and wide open spaces.

Even if he did not remember Natalia, would he kill her?

Natalia stopped pacing the room and curled up in the corner. All she could do was to wait. They had to come and get her eventually.

After an eternity, they opened the door to the small holding cell and took Natalia to another room. This room contained a table and two chairs. Natalia stood by one of the chairs for a few minutes, wondering what would happen next.

And then the Winter Soldier walked into the room.

His shoulder was bandaged and he was pale, but he was the same man she had known in the forest years before. It was as if he had not aged a day.

"You must be the littlest cadet they've ever had," he said in his deep voice. He sat at the table and looked Natalia over. "You're too thin and your legs are too long, you look like a little spider. Tell me, little spider, what is your name?"

Natalia stayed behind her chair, looking at the man to gauge his meaning. His body was relaxed, his face calm. He did not appear to recognize her. "They call me Natasha," she said. She remembered the words of the doctor, that if she told her friend of their time in the forest, he would be executed for disobeying orders. She swallowed. Fine. She would not tell him of the past. But she could tell him of the present. "But I'm really Natalia. What is your name?"

The Winter Soldier looked at her in amusement. "I do not have a name, only a designation," he said. "Sit down and stop fidgeting, child."

Natalia crawled into the chair and tried to be still. "What is your designation, comrade?"

The Winter Soldier sat back and looked at her closely. "Are we comrades?"

"Yes, sir," Natalia responded.  "I serve to protect the Motherland."

"A little spider like you?" The man frowned. "I supposed that even a spider can sneak into tiny places unseen."

Natalia shifted in the chair. "What is your designation?" she asked. Feeling bold, she went on, "Are you the Winter Soldier?"

His forehead creased as he frowned. "Where did you hear that name?"

Natalia shrugged. "In tiny places."

His frown lightened into a smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling up in amusement. He had a nice smile, Natalia realized, a smile that she remembered. He was a handsome man, so different from all the other soldiers on the compound.

"I suppose that you can call me that, Natalia," he said, and her heart grew light to hear her true name spoken in these walls. "Now, come over here, I am going to tell you exactly what you did wrong today."

"Are you mad that I shot you?" she asked as she slipped off her chair and walked around the table.

"That depends on why you shot me," he said, leaning back. He watched her every move.

She thought about making up a story, one that would excuse what she had done, but something in the way the Winter Soldier looked at her with his wide blue eyes made Natalia think that he would know she was lying. So she told him the truth. "I shot you because I didn't want to die."

His eyebrows went up. "And you thought that if you didn't shoot me, you would?"

"If I didn't get through the door, I would," Natalia said firmly. She didn't know why she thought that, but she did. She knew.

The Winter Soldier looked at her, and Natalia looked back at him. "Natalia," he said after a minute. "I like you. So I am going to tell you something very important. I want you to listen very closely."

Natalia's stomach twisted in anticipation. Even if he did not know her, he liked her and he was going to help her! Maybe deep down, he was still her friend. "What, Comrade Winter Soldier?" she asked.

He leaned forward and tapped his chin with his metal thumb. "I am going to teach you the most important thing of all," he said. "I am going to teach you how to survive."

Natalia took a deep breath, hope blossoming in her chest as she smiled at the man.

The Winter Soldier, the most feared soldier in the entire Department, would teach her to become a better soldier.

And that was all that Natalia Romanova had ever wanted.

_**end** _

**Author's Note:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Rusalka: malevolent female water spirits who live in waterways (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusalka>)  
> Leshy: the male woodland spirit in Slavic mythology (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leshy>)  
> Baba Yaga: the old witch who lives deep in the woods (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_yaga>)


End file.
